Already in her Cannes-awarded 2010 short Bathing Mickey, director Frida Kempff (Knocking [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Frida Kempff
fiche film]) showed an evident affection for strong-willed women in swimming gear. Did she have a Sally Bauer biopic on her mind already back then? It could well be the case. Any which way, coming 14 years later and world-premiering in the Centrepiece section at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, The Swedish Torpedo [+lire aussi :
interview : Frida Kempff
fiche film] is exactly that.

The “torpedo” moniker is highly appropriate when it comes to Sally Bauer (1908-2001), the Swedish swimming sensation who took on a number of long-distance challenges, usually succeeding with flying colours. With no Olympic medal or world championship title to her name – a world war getting in the way of things could have played a significant part – she’s gradually been confined to relative obscurity, even nationally. In her time, though, she was a big kahuna, and her 1939 English Channel crossing (as the fourth woman ever to do so; she also repeated the feat in 1951) almost made her a female Charles Lindbergh of the waters, at least nationally. There’s a school and a train named after her, a novel and a play written about her, and now, a feature film focusing on her.

Basing their narrative on a mix between authentic and fictional events and characters, Kempff and co-writer Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten (Beyond [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], Call Girl [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film]) give Bauer’s ventures and battles the classic underdog treatment. It’s the 1930s, when women who didn’t know their place – either as a good housewife or as an even better housewife – were given instant black-sheep status. The fact that Sally is the single mother of a seven-year-old boy doesn’t help. Even worse is this selfish swimming nonsense. Sally tries to comply by attending a home-economics school (depicted almost as a women’s prison or a drably Lutheran version of those Irish laundries for fallen girls) but, quite literally, feels like a fish out of water. She discreetly drops out and goes for a crawl across the Kattegat, setting a new record of 17 hours and five minutes, beating the old one by 12. Hours, that is.

In Josefin Neldén (The Restaurant, Border [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Ali Abbasi
fiche film]), Kempff has found just the right and versatile person to play Bauer, portraying the loving, if hardly ideal, mother, the girlish paramour of her son’s two-timing, already-married father (a boyish Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), and the downright steampunk aquatic daredevil, smeared in muddy oil, with sturdy, oversized goggles in place – an emancipated 1930s female who truly perfected her special chops in life. Lisa Carlehed gives admirable support as Sally’s hard-pressed but ultimately devoted sister-in-arms, and newcomer Arthur Sörbring is quite wonderful as little Lars, torn between at most 49% anger at his mother’s neglect, and at least 51% pride and excitement in her glorious adventure. Hannes Krantz from Crazy Pictures provides first-rate camera work throughout, including, needless to say, some pretty awesome water moments, above as well as below the surface.

The Swedish Torpedo is a Swedish-Estonian-Finnish-Belgian co-production staged by Momento Film, and co-produced by Amrion, Velvet Films, Inland Film Company, Film i Väst, TV4, SVT, RTBF and Proximus. Its world sales are handled by Urban Sales.