The Film "Swing" - Relationships, Reviews

• Russia, 2008
• Director: Anton Sivers
• Starring: Andrey Merzlikin, Maria Mironova, Ksenia Rappoport

The swing is a metaphor for the relationship between the protagonists. He is a heroic special forces soldier nicknamed Sledgehammer with a set of ideas about the behavior and values of a "real man." She is a hairdresser named Tanya with a complex character, but the beautiful beauty of Maria Mironova. They raise a daughter and constantly quarrel and reconcile

Such relationships are called close-conflict: together it is sickening, apart from being boring, as they say. What if your couple has a similar relationship?

Between love and hate

A close-conflict relationship is a constant swing between love and hate. The heroes sometimes part, then violently put up with words of recognition and passionate kisses. This pattern resembles a child's tag game: either one catches up to the other, or vice versa.

Sometimes Tanya escapes from Kuvalda, it is “escapes”, secretly. And then he goes to look for her in the hangouts and dens of drug addicts. Now Sledgehammer is packing up his suitcases, and his wife stops him, almost throwing herself under the wheels of the car. Actually, this is the whole plot. Only small variations await the audience: the wounded Sledgehammer is in the hospital, and his wife there begs him for forgiveness; then Tanya runs down the drain pipe to her addict lover …

At the end of the heroes, another reconciliation awaits, which is positioned as a happy ending - they say, then everything will be different, finally their life will improve, and their daughter Helen is laughing and crying with happiness at the same time.

But the question remains: how is this truce different from the previous ones? What gives the viewer a reason to think that tomorrow Kvalda will not return to his mistress, and Tanya will not run away to a party from the "borscht and slippers" that her husband demands of her?

If you are used to conflict

A viewer who maintains common sense and contact with reality is likely to assume that everything will continue to be the same. Moreover, as an alcoholic gets used to doses and needs more and more, so people who seek conflict in order to experience strong emotions want more and more heat.

This is a type of addiction - emotional and adrenaline addiction

The higher the tragedy and danger, the brighter the feelings and pleasure. Therefore, the scandals must go on increasing, otherwise the effect is not the same. So it is logical to assume that the heroes will continue to quarrel and reconcile, only the quarrels will be more tragic each time, and the consequences will be more fatal.

This time, the guilty Tanya sits on a swing under the windows of Kuvalda and his new woman for hours in winter, but does not fall ill. Next time, perhaps, she will grab pneumonia or try to commit suicide … Alas, in a close-conflict relationship, more and more tension is required, the conflict only increases.

Testing reality

But the heroes themselves at the end of the film, apparently, believe in their final and irrevocable reconciliation - just as they believed in previous times. This is a violation of reality testing (adequate perception of it), which is characteristic of close-conflict relationships.

Swing is a very true metaphor; partners all the time swing from one extreme to another. At the stage of hatred, the mechanism of devaluation and demonization is turned on: both the relationship and the partner seem extremely terrible. Once a loved one is perceived as a monster, everything in him enrages and causes disgust. But hatred is replaced by adoration, and the swing reaches a different polarity: now the partner is idealized and seems to be the best and most beautiful, desirable and necessary.

Both extremes have little to do with reality and border on insanity. So the player's wife believes that he will no longer cross the threshold of the casino. And the husband of a drug addict - that she has forever lost interest in the "substance."

People close to you may be induced into madness: begin to share distorted views

For example, the player's wife calls his mother and enthusiastically tells that now he is no longer a player, that he promised to give up on oath and now a new life will begin. Mom can believe this monologue and share her daughter's optimism (in most cases, completely unjustified).

So the viewer, who believed that Tanya and Kuvalda would begin a new ideal family life, was only induced into their madness. You can get away from the repetitive scenario of relationships, but this requires a huge, long and difficult work on yourself.

How to change the scenario of a relationship

A close-conflict relationship is definitely not an example of a healthy union and family happiness. This is a kind of dysfunctional, that is, unhealthy connection. It is not based on love, but on emotional dependence.

Partners need each other, not love; need for support, because each of them cannot be alone. This is an immature relationship typical of an infantile personality.

Sledgehammer's muscles and Tanya's female forms testify only to bodily maturity, but cannot be a measure of psychological maturity. Passport and psychological ages may differ. And social achievement is also not an indicator of inner maturity and personal development.

Face to face faces cannot be read

Close-conflict relationships are built on the basis of symbiosis, psychological fusion. This is an infantile type of contact: the child is fused with his mother and generally does not separate himself well from the world. There cannot be one. Having reached the passport adulthood, but not psychological, such a person in adulthood seeks to merge: intimacy without psychological boundaries. Denying autonomy and independence to oneself and others.

“He (a) will be lost without me”, “I will be lost without you” - this is what the characters of the film “Swing” constantly say. Thus, we see contact-merging: "I am responsible for everything that happens to another person, and he is responsible for me."

Such relationships are called codependent, both partners are fused in them, as a whole, and the psychological boundary between them is incomprehensible

In a healthy union, there is always a psychological boundary. Love knows no boundaries - a dangerous delusion. A simple example: no matter how much partners love each other, each has its own toothbrush.

Love polygon

Dysfunctional relationships need additional support to maintain balance: an unhealthy system begins to draw in extraneous elements.

For example, a conflicting married couple can throw a scandal in public, in a public place or visiting friends. Thus, they call witnesses and symbolic participants to their side. Or they begin to complain to relatives and friends about each other, instead of directly expressing their complaints to the partner and discussing all the stress points.

Another common mechanism for maintaining balance in a dysfunctional family is the emergence of connections on the side. First, Tanya has a lover - a drug addict and a party-goer who treats her badly and at the same time begs him not to leave. Here again we see the scenario of a close-conflict relationship.

Then Kuvalda also has a relationship with her daughter's teacher - a lonely romantic woman Inna. This is already a love polygon … On the side, partners usually get what they cannot get in the main union. What is this in the movie "Swing"?

An interesting choice of lovers

From a positive Sledgehammer, Tanya constantly rushes to an unambiguously negative character. Why such a lover when there is a good husband?

Choosing a bad boy for a love affair may indicate a desire to raise your own self-esteem. Indeed, against the background of a positive husband in all respects, Tanya can feel her "badness" and unworthiness; and next to the degraded addict, she feels like a queen.

Why does Kuvalda need a mistress, and so contrasting with his wife? If the wife is a rustic blonde, then the mistress is an intelligent brunette, a former ballerina, with complex mental rushes. Perhaps, it is next to such a mistress, a lonely middle-aged woman, that Sledgehammer finally feels needed - after all, his wife brightly and defiantly rejects him. And the mistress reaches out to him with all her many years of loneliness.

Why is Tanya so demonstratively rejecting and betraying her husband? Let's return to the issue of infantilism of close-conflict relations.

An infantile person projects the figure of a parent onto a partner. Instead of a wife or husband, he sees mom or dad

Most likely, Tanya projects onto her husband the image of a father against whom she rebel and needs. She accuses her husband of treating her like a strict father, but it is she herself who provokes him to this.

No plans for the future

In a close-conflict relationship, there is a paradox: partners are in close interconnection, but really do not know each other. The same "Face to face, face can not be disassembled."

An attentive viewer will think: how psychologically close are the characters of "Swing"? They do not have meaningful conversations, psychological revelations, they do not share memories of the past and plans for the future. Their interaction boils down to everyday issues, sex, making claims and declaring love. It is a foundation of passion and inner immaturity, and can hardly be called solid.

In general, we can say that the film "Swing" clearly shows the scenario of close-conflict relations: how it proceeds and what are the consequences. Each hero makes his own choices and is responsible for them.

But there is a sympathetic character - Helen, the little daughter of the heroes. She sees all their fights, they do not try to hide them from their daughter (another sign of a dysfunctional family). This is another responsibility of parents: to understand how their behavior affects children.

And I want to repeat the words of the heroine of one anecdote: “Look carefully, children! And never do that yourself! "

Read also about toxic and codependent relationships:

• Project "Sex in Cinema": sexologist about the film "My King"
• Lost child. The roles that choose us
• Addiction love. How to get rid of it