Feelgood true-life heart-warmers about courageous people overcoming medical conditions are common enough. But not when that condition zaps and jabs and stabs at the genre itself, piercing the carapace of sentimentality while surreally commenting on the form and on the demure niceties of polite society, in which we all keep our thoughts to ourselves.
Kirk Jones’s terrifically warm, generous film is about real-life activist John Davidson, who is from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders and has Tourette syndrome, with its tics, compulsive behaviour patterns and random obscene shouts. He was awarded an MBE in 2019 for his work educating the nation about the condition since he first exhibited its symptoms as a teenager in 1989, as captured in the BBC’s sensational documentary John’s Not Mad. I Swear contains a great performance from Robert Aramayo, full of intelligence and charm, and it raises relevant questions about the overdiagnosis debate surrounding conditions such as ADHD and autism, as well as the larger tonal point of how, when and whether to laugh at John or with him.
Scott Ellis Watson plays the young John at school, who is bullied and savagely given the strap as he becomes symptomatic in his teens. Aramayo is then the adult John, sweet-natured and stoic, who gets punched in clubs and is brutally hospitalised for yelping at a girl in the street. There are also lovely performances from Shirley Henderson as his mum Heather, who can’t cope, Maxine Peake as the mental health nurse who takes him in, and Peter Mullan as community centre worker Tommy, who gives John a chance. John is at one stage tempted into carrying drugs under his jumper for some local villains, but his condition means he is hilariously bad at this; he shouts, “I’m carrying drugs!” in front of two policemen in the street.
John insists that Tourette is “not a disability”: it is an interesting talking point, given that so many people with other conditions appear to claim precisely this status. But then what is it? When John appears in court, Tommy persuasively testifies on his behalf to the effect that, however it’s defined, John can’t be making it up, when it gets him assaulted, vilified, rendered all but unemployable and shoved into a police cell – and the judge appears to concede this common-sense point.
John eventually meets other people with Tourette, leading to an amazing scene in the back of a car with a young woman in which they yelp at each other surreally before calming down; the film shows the experience to have been cathartic and therapeutic. In later scenes John convenes sessions for many people with the condition and their families and carers, but there is no question of ironising these scenes or even burdening them with meaning or social commentary – this is not Marat/Sade we’re talking about. The film tactfully passes over the question of what the condition has meant for John’s romantic life.
Do John’s tics represent access to some sort of inner truth? Do we laugh because he can say what we can’t? Sort of. Just before meeting the queen to get his MBE, he shouts: “Fuck the queen!” (We see real video footage of him getting the medal over the closing credits, although not this amazing event.) It’s not the truth, though; he is actually very proud of meeting the queen and getting his honour. Yet we can all feel oppressed and nervous and resentful in the moment; the impulse to shout back at unhappiness. This is an absorbing, compassionate film.
I Swear is in UK cinemas from 10 October, and in Australian cinemas from 8 November.