First, a confession: about a month ago, I fell down a Traitors hole so deep that I thought I might never emerge. After being lured in by the celebrity edition, I went back and watched every season of the regular one across three weeks, totalling almost 36 hours (just a day and a half of my entire life gone, is it? No worries). One Sunday, I disappeared a hangover by sitting catatonic in front of the TV for eight hours, watching the same basic - and, undeniably, alluring - format play out over and over again. Consuming TV like this can put you in a trance-like state, like a two-year-old rendered mercifully silent by an iPhone blasting Fireman Sam. I am not proud to say I loved it.
Thankfully, around the same time, I had a work project that forced me to pull my head out and watch some proper movies. Among them was I Swear, which became somewhat of a surprise hit in UK cinemas upon its release in early October. If I'm honest, I didn't check out I Swear at the time because of its premise. It's a biopic about John Davidson, the Scotsman credited with educating the UK about Tourette's Syndrome, which made me think it would be a bit self-serious and maudlin, as some of these British movies are. But I Swear is not like that at all - it is frequently devastating, sure, but it's also the funniest film I've seen this year. In my Traitors stupor, I was very hard to please. And I Swear had me locked in from start to finish.
The film opens with a prologue set in the 1980s. Davidson is a teenager whose tics seem to emerge from nowhere and begin to wreak havoc upon his life (and, tragically, his budding career as a goalkeeper). Then, after a time jump, we follow him from his mid-20s into his 50s, through various traumatic incidents - as his tics variously get him beaten up, arrested, spurned by potential girlfriends and abandoned by his family - through to a greener patch where he travels the country educating kids about Tourette's. As an adult, he's brilliantly played by Robert Aramayo, who you might know as Young Elrond from Amazon's dull Lord of the Rings prequel. In less capable hands, Davidson would feel like a caricature, but Aramayo manages to make his Tourette's tics clearly involuntary, playing both the funny and the sad bits beautifully. If this was an A24 movie, we'd be talking about an Oscar fight; as it stands, the leading actor trophy at the BAFTAs should be well within his grasp, if voters are doing their due diligence.
I realise that the above does not sound all that funny. The truth is, I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much I laughed when Davidson said the exact worst possible thing in several social situations. Within seconds of meeting his friend's mother, Dotty (Maxine Peake), who is suffering with a terminal illness, he says, "You're gonna die of cancer, ha ha!" At a job interview at a community centre, he calls his prospective boss a "wrinkly bastard" and, upon the mention of hosting a school theatre production, shouts, "I'm a paedophile!" And, a particular favourite: as he and his dog are waiting to cross the road, he keeps saying, "Go on then!" as a car comes zipping by, quickly followed by "Stay!" in case the dog actually listens to him. Obviously, without context this all sounds horrendous, but we know he can't help but let his intrusive thoughts leak out into the world. In all of these cases, his actions have no real consequences, as the people (and animals) in his life understand him. And the film gets away with leaning into the unfortunate comedy of his condition because it is so deeply empathetic to his plight.
There is probably a conversation to be had about how I Swear plays with the idea that no one is truly honest in most social situations, and where honesty actually gets you (on one occasion, Davidson very briefly becomes the worst drug dealer of all time, yelling "half-price heroin!" at coppers as he's smuggling a package under his jumper. They immediately throw him in jail). But none of that actually crossed my mind when I was watching it - I Swear is just a very well-made film that works on every level. Catch it before it leaves cinemas (or, if you're so inclined, when it drops on digital VOD on 24 November).
GQ stories you might have missed:
Big fits, hot takes, and Skepta on the decks: inside GQ's 2025 Men of the Year party
10 movies to get hyped for in 2026
18 thoughts I had while watching the beautiful and strange Wuthering Heights trailer
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NETFLIX
TRAIN DREAMS
This meditative drama about a logger (Joel Edgerton) working on the railroads in early 20th-century USA is a quiet Oscar contender.
APPLE TV+
PLURIBUS
Vince Gilligan's first show post-Better Call Saul - about a small group of people immune to an alien virus that turns the rest of humanity into docile worker bees - has somehow lived up to lofty expectations.
BBC IPLAYER
AFTERSUN
Before Hamnet arrives, catch up on Paul Mescal's other extremely sad family drama, where he plays a father going through a mental health crisis while on holiday in Turkey with his young daughter..
SKY/NOW
THE REHEARSAL SEASON 2
Nathan Fielder's insane docuseries/reality show takes things to new heights as he attempts to solve a cockpit communication crisis that has been a factor in several plane crashes. It's funny and exhilarating, and probably the best season of TV you'll see this year. |
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Earlier this year, Tom Hiddleston starred in Jamie Lloyd's acclaimed revival of Much Ado About Nothing on the West End, which he managed to slot in around his filming schedule for Avengers: Doomsday. In conversation with GQ, he explained the similarities he can see between those two vastly different worlds. "Shakespeare wrote really larger-than-life, complex characters, and part of the privilege of getting to play those parts is that you get to inhabit that complexity," he said. "What I found with the Marvel stories and characters is that they have this capacity to cross culture and language and age. They are wildly different but the heroes are who we want to be; the villains are who we are afraid we are." |
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"Die Hard makes me fall asleep every time - it's neanderthal cinema." |
KEMI ALEMORU
HEAD OF EDITORIAL CONTENT AT GLAMOUR |
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EDGAR WRIGHT IS OBSESSED WITH... PILLION |
"It was funny, heartbreaking, daring and endlessly fascinating. The performances by Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling were both brilliant and the audience at the London Film Festival
ate it up." |
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