Adapted from Shannon Pufahl’s novel, director Daniel Minahan’s 1950s-set drama follows an unlikely trio of lost and yearning souls.Mongrel Media
On Swift Horses
Directed by Daniel Minahan
Written by Bryce Kass, based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi and Will Poulter
Classification PG; 117 minutes
Opens in select theatres April 25
A polite and well-intentioned heartbreaker that cannot quite convey the heightened emotions roiling its sexually frustrated characters, On Swift Horses kicks an awful lot of dust in your eye.
Adapted from Shannon Pufahl’s novel, director Daniel Minahan’s 1950s-set drama follows an unlikely trio of lost and yearning souls. In the dull and dry outskirts of San Diego, diner waitress Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is waffling on committing the rest of her life to the hard-working but straight-arrow Lee (Will Poulter), who just came back from the Korean War with big American Dream plans: a house, a baby or two, and of course Muriel as his devoted wife. Just as Muriel is considering her options – which aren’t all that plentiful – along comes Lee’s younger brother Julius (Jacob Elordi), a charismatic charmer who makes a shirtless entrance into the couple’s life that portends some kind of grand romantic betrayal.
Yet, very quickly, Minahan’s film pivots from melodramatic assumptions, with Julius and Muriel connecting not because of a mutual attraction but because they are each harbouring their own repressed queer desires, although the unattached Julius is more free to explore his, with caution.
And so begins a years-long emotional dance between three deeply unhappy people, each the victim of the cultural times while being all too happy to become the authors of their own miseries, too. Julius runs off to Vegas, where he meets a card shark (Diego Calva) of dubious standing, while Muriel begins to torture herself and others with an on-and-off dalliance with a more out-and-proud neighbour (Sasha Calle).
There is nothing technically objectionable about On Swift Horses. The cookie-cutter suburbia of Eisenhower’s America is shot with impressively chilly distance by Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier (Women Talking). Elordi, Edgar-Jones and Poulter dig into their characters with the kind of clear-eyed commitment that has helped each of them become the hardest-working actors of their day (between this, Warfare and Death of a Unicorn, Poulter will have released one film every other week since the end of March). And Jeriana San Juan’s costume design captures the era of closeted desire with a wink to the smothering repression that so many lovers faced.
Will Poulter, left, and Daisy Edgar-Jones star in On Swift Horses. After Poulter returns from the Korean War, they struggle to connect because they are each harbouring their own repressed queer desires.Mongrel Media
Yet even with all these elements stacked working together, Minahan’s film lacks an inner fire – it drips with dispassion. Given the novel’s searing themes and the prestige of the film’s cast, On Swift Horses should gallop straight into your heart. Instead, it limps along, the sunset forever looming in the distance.
