I Swear: Fascinating Subject Gets the Heartfelt Treatment

By Liz Braun

Rating: B

Scottish activist John Davidson has Tourette Syndrome and works to educate others on the condition. He is considered an ambassador for Tourette’s and has been featured in several BBC documentaries, starting when he was a teenager.

His is a fascinating life. But somehow, I Swear, a biopic about him, is disappointing — a formulaic, plodding bit of cinema. The film has some great moments, no question, and a moving third act, but the storytelling can only be described as heartfelt, and we don’t mean that in a good way.

A spectacular performance from Robert Aramayo as Davidson is very likely the reason I Swear has won so many big awards.

The story begins in 1983, when Davidson is a teenager (played by Scott Ellis Watson) with a paper route and mad skills as the keeper on his school soccer team. He is a confident kid just starting high school.

Then he begins to experience physical tics and involuntary movements — blinking, shrugging — and then vocal tics, uttering harsh sounds and obscene language. Nobody in his village of Galashiels seems able to help or understand.

His parents are dismayed and disappointed, and seemingly unable to cope with his condition. His headmaster gives him the strap for fighting and spitting and swearing, and he eventually must leave school altogether. His parents separate.

Some 13 years go by, and John — medicated and still living with his prim, withdrawn mother (Shirley Henderson) — remains in the village. A chance encounter with an old schoolmate changes his life; the friend’s mother (Maxine Peake) is a psychiatric nurse, and she decides to take John in and see if she can improve his life.

And she does. John stops taking medication and starts trying to have a social life, but that backfires; he does get a job as a caretaker’s assistant, however, and that’s a first.

But he inadvertently gets into a bar fight, and later faces criminal charges, and then, barking bad words at a stranger gets him beaten up. His sympathetic boss (Peter Mullan) tells him that he must start educating other people about Tourette’s if he wants things to change.

Davidson does indeed begin helping others with Tourette’s. A distraught mom and dad seek him out and ask him to speak to their daughter, who also has Tourette’s and has never met anyone else who did.

He and the daughter sit in a car and tic and twist and swear together, an amazing scene, and then John begins operating proper workshops and meetings to help other people with the syndrome.

He gets honours from the Queen. He becomes head caretaker.

He travels to Nottingham to be part of an experimental nerve stimulation experiment, and here is where the movie becomes deeply, briefly affecting.

I Swear is what’s usually described as a “crowd pleaser” but there is an issue with the way the film conveys the alienation John Davidson feels. A viewer gets a pile-on of terrible events rather than the deep character dive required for emotional investment.

This is not to deny the educational value of the film, which is huge. Children are cruel; I Swear should be required viewing in middle schools everywhere.

I Swear. Written and directed by Kirk Jones. Starring Robert Aramayo, Maxine Peake, and Shirley Henderson. In theatres April 24.