A little ways into “On Swift Horses,” Henry (Diego Calva) takes Julius (Jacob Elordi), one of our central characters, to watch an atomic bomb test in the desert. It’s a fitting metaphor for the way that Henry – a smokin’ hot Las Vegas casino worker – is about to blow up Julius’ life.
That’s sort of what “On Swift Horses,” directed by Daniel Minahan and based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel of the same name, is all about – although, the bomb metaphor is a little more of an on the nose representation of awakening than anything else that happens in the film.
A romantic melodrama set in 1950s America, the film follows Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her husband Lee (Will Poulter) as they try to make a life for themselves in California after Lee returns from the Korean War. Julius, Lee’s younger brother, means to join them, but keeps putting off the journey. As Julius’ romance with Henry takes shape, Muriel starts to make discoveries of her own – namely, her attraction to Sandra (Sasha Calle), her new neighbor.
Muriel and Julius serve as our main characters, two people on separate, but similar journeys of self-discovery – one trying to do what’s expected of them, the other running away, but both avoiding the truth about their sexualities and their identities. Melodrama can be a difficult genre to get right, but “On Swift Horses” enters the canon as a solid modern entry, a story of what it means to stop going through the motions, and to truly awaken to your life. The movie features a couple of strong performances and some very sharp writing (the screenplay was adapted by Bryce Kass), particularly when it comes to its male characters. However, Muriel and Sandra’s storyline suffers slightly, if only because the film becomes more interested in telling, rather than showing.
Julius and Muriel meet each other just before Muriel and Lee head to California, spending some time together at Muriel’s late mother’s Kansas home where she and Lee are shacking up before they get married. As soon as Muriel and Julius meet – her secretly smoking out the bathroom window, him splayed shirtless across a car like a pin-up, despite the freezing cold weather – the connection between the two is crystal clear. It’s not sexual, exactly – although that chemistry is definitely there – but rather a sense of knowing, recognizing something in the other that they don’t know about themselves quite yet. “I see you,” their gazes seem to say. “I am the same.”
The way that certain experiences, certain people, can completely change your outlook on life – blow everything up, so to speak – is one of the things that “On Swift Horses” portrays extremely well. In the scene where Muriel and Sandra first meet, a confidence suddenly overtakes Muriel in a way we haven’t seen before. Lee is there, but Muriel pays for the wares the couple is buying from Sandra before he can even lift a finger. When they walk back to the car, she slides into the driver’s seat without hesitation, declaring that she’ll drive this time around. There’s a pep in her step, a vigor to her movements that hasn’t existed up until now.
“On Swift Horses” understands awakening on a base level, and Elordi serves as a physical manifestation of that theme throughout the film. When Julius first appears, he’s playing the typical bad boy – tall, dark, handsome, and unpredictable, as likely to kiss you as he is to leave with your wallet in the morning. But there’s something half-hearted in Elordi’s performance, something a little uncomfortable in the way Julius carries his laissez-faire approach to life and relationships. When he meets Henry (and Calva is burning up the screen from the moment he shows up here), at first the discomfort he has been feeling the whole time comes to the forefront, but after that you can feel Julius’ physicality becoming lighter, solely because of the presence of this other person. It’s deft and delicate work from Elordi, less a bad boy with a sensitive side and more a lost person learning what it is to find himself.
“On Swift Horses” works best in the moments where people don’t say much, letting the silences and tensions between them speak for themselves. In a moment towards the end of the movie, Julius and Muriel reunite, one of the few moments they’re actually on screen together. It’s a moment that’s more about what the characters are holding back rather than what they’re saying, as Julius hints to Muriel that he understands what she’s going through before swiftly, horribly, selfishly switching things up on her at the last second.
Poulter has perhaps the most difficult role of the bunch as Lee, Muriel’s husband – the prototypical 50s man with a tucked-in shirt and overly-coiffed hair. But as Lee puts the pieces together surrounding both Muriel and Julius’ true desires, Poulter is thoughtful and much softer in his approach to confronting those revelations. In one scene, Lee catches Muriel leaving Sandra’s house after the two women have had an argument. Muriel approaches the car as if nothing has happened, and Lee says nothing to her about what he has just witnessed, his emotions playing out over his face instead.
These are the moments where “On Swift Horses” achieves something great. But these moments only make the scenes where characters become a little too wordy, a little too literal, all the more noticeable and clunky. Unfortunately, these moments tend to surface during scenes between Muriel and Sandra, (the fight they have before Lee and Muriel’s silent ride home is a great example), upsetting the sensual chemistry between the two actors. If anything, it’s a great reminder that melodrama often lives in the spaces in between – in the tension, not in the action.