FILM
I SWEAR
FOUR STARS FOR A FILM WITH MANY FOUR-LETTER WORDS
★★★★
OUT 10 OCTOBER / CERT TBC / 120 MINS
DIRECTOR Kirk Jones
CAST Robert Aramayo, Maxine Peake, Shirley Henderson, Peter Mullan, Scott Ellis Watson
PLOT John Davidson (Aramayo) lives with Tourette syndrome, for which he is ostracised — until he meets kindly Dottie (Peake).
AS FAR AS cosy, feel-good British films go, I Swear begins in irreverent form. As John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) lines up to receive his MBE from Queen Elizabeth II, his nerves get the better of him. “Fuck the Queen!” he blurts out. It’s a deliciously iconoclastic moment, and one that serves both sides of this delightful film’s two wolves: the warm-and-fuzzy teatime template that it appears to follow, and the involuntarily foul-mouthed subject that it tracks.