I Swear Review

Kirk Jones, who made Waking Ned and Nanny McPhee, tells John Davidson's story in the familiar British shape: a hard childhood in the Scottish Borders, cruelty from teachers and strangers, rescue by decent people, public honours. Scott Ellis Watson, in his first role, plays the twelve-year-old whose goalkeeping hopes collapse when the tics arrive, and Shirley Henderson is sharp as a mother who cannot cope.

The adult story belongs to Robert Aramayo, who spent three months with Davidson in Galashiels and plays the tics, the swearing and the shame without once turning them into a party piece. Maxine Peake's Dottie, a mental health nurse who takes him in, and Peter Mullan's Tommy, the caretaker who gives him a job, supply the warmth, and the script finds real comedy in scenes a lesser film would play only for pity, among them a courtroom oath he cannot get through.

The structure is conventional and the final stretch leans hard on uplift. Critics were warm, at 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 70 on Metacritic, and Aramayo won the BAFTA for Best Actor and the British Independent Film Award for Best Lead Performance, while Lauren Evans's casting won at both.