Rare are the films that have depicted Tourette’s, and even rarer are those who have depicted it with as much gentility and sensitivity as I Swear, Kirk Jones’ account of John Davidson, an ambassador and educator on the condition who at seventeen was the subject of BBC documentary John’s Not Mad. In this reprise, John is played by the charismatic Robert Aramayo, with a wonderful supporting performance by Scott Ellis Watson, who portrays him aged twelve when he first start developing his tics. At this stage, John is a promising goalkeeper, and his coach has even sent for a head hunter to watch him play. But John isn’t himself anymore – he has, completely out of the blue, started developing a neck tic, followed by a propensity to spit out his food, in this case at the headmaster’s face, which has earned him a whipping. With his spasms and lacerated hand, his goalkeeping is not to the standard it usually is, and neither the head hunter nor his father are impressed. At home, his mother (Shirley Henderson) has ordered him to have dinner facing the fireplace. And always, John doesn’t complain or try to express what is happening to him, quietly accepting that this is his new life – it is at this stage that he begins to falter. When Aramayo takes over, John is in his late twenties and still living with his mother, jobless and on heavy medication. The return of old schoolfriend Murray prompts a family dinner invite, where he meets his mother Dotty (Maxine Peake), a mental health nurse with six months to live. Fed up with waiting around, Dotty decides to help John, and it isn’t long before he has moved into the spare room and started a new life in which he can begin to see a place for him in society.
I Swear does a lot of effing, blinding and violence, as John is time and again confronted with those who do not understand his condition, but what it does best is the fusion of comedy and drama. There is almost none of the former during John’s childhood however, in which no one even attempts to understand what might be affecting. The solitude here is palpable, as adults time and again mistake what is clearly an illness for misbehaviour despite John’s evident alarm. His father’s departure at this time, and his mother’s refusal to discuss it with him, leads him to hold himself responsible for his family’s gradual disintegration. It is only when Dotty walks into his life that John sees potential in his future – her presence is like a breath of fresh air, and a moving one at that. A scene in which she scolds him for his language will forever stay with me – she is not asking him to apologise for his swearing, but for the constant apologies for something he cannot help. Peake is certainly the genesis of many a tear, as John begins to take confidence and understand his condition better, but there is also Tommy the caretaker (played by an always heartwarming Peter Mullan), who gives him a job despite his eff this and eff that, and teaches him the power of independence. It’s refreshing to watch a film in which the majority of the characters want to help rather than harm – perhaps the only place in which I Swear falls short is its refusal to address the crux of John’s condition. Tourette’s will often appear for no reason, but studies have shown tics can be lessened by the absence of triggers. Never is this addressed, and never does John set foot in a therapist’s office, though perhaps this would falsify the biographical element of the drama. But I Swear isn’t so much preoccupied with the genesis of the condition, but rather with its treatment – notably through humour. John is misunderstood, at times alarming in the streets of his Scottish town, beaten up even and thrown in jail on more than one occasion for instigating a fight (which is never his fault) – but he is also bewilderingly, delightfully funny. I Swear is wonderfully ardent in its commitment to laughing with him.
