The world of swimming has been explored recently in two other films, THE SWIMMERS and the recent Netflix Annette Bening film NYAD. Now there is a third offering, writer/director Elliott Hasler‘s British indie VINDICATION SWIM.
Shot in both colour and monochrome – and set in the era of the emerging Suffragettes (plus a desire for women to make their mark) typist Mercedes Gleitze (Kirsten Callaghan) has one objective – to become the first woman to swim the English Channel. Inevitably, given the context and time, she is really up against it, but tries to seek solace in troubled ex-swimming trainer Harold Best (John Locke).
Resigning her secretarial job, she teams up with Best and heads from Calais to the White Cliffs at nightfall to make her claim for history. Battling bad waters and jellyfish amongst other things, Gleitze does achieve her aim and strides into the fame game. However, a rival swimmer, Edith Gade (Victoria Summer) strides onto a Movietone reel claiming to be the fastest to cross. Given the period and context, the sense of achievement is about to be tested on Gleitze’s behalf….
Competent performances and production values do their level best to mask a disjointed factual drama, that attempts to shine a light on a major British sporting achievement in the first half of the twentieth century. There is a lack of excitement when watching the actual event take place on screen, compared to the human drama that defined THE SWIMMERS and NYAD (Bening is nominated for Best Actress at the 2024 Academy Awards).
Hasler seems less interested in focusing on the dynamics of what it takes for somebody to swim the channel and more on the consequence of Gleitze’s personal goal (dynamic sporting action always works (think ROCKY for example)).
The story is intriguing enough and clearly makes for one of those ever-reliable true story revelations that we have seen umpteen times over the years, but one senses that there should have been another level of conflict and drama that would have taken VINDICATION SWIM into the realm of a true British classic.
Positive to take away from the film is that Callaghan and Summer make very watchable leads, with great support from Locke. Overall, research will probably yield more fascinating facts about a story that had a whole lot more cinematic potential than what is presented to audiences here.
VINDICATION SWIM is in cinemas now.
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