On Swift Horses ★★★1/2

Availability: No longer in theaters; became available for purchase or streaming May 27. See JustWatch here for full availability, including AppleTV, Prime Video and Spectrum (the last only until June 22).

Not Exactly “National Velvet”

Director Daniel Minahan’s first feature until recently was consigned, unfortunately in our view, to the fringe of the art house circuit. It was showing at just one theater in Los Angeles, and there were only 3 other people in the audience. We chose to see it because it featured a prominent actor whose work has impressed us, Jacob Elordi (“Saltburn,” 2023; “Oh, Canada,” 2024).

Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Julius (Jacob Elordi) have obvious sexual attraction.

She also flirts with sexual liaisons with women,

and Julius describes himself as "a thief, a faggot, and alone."

There are horses in “On Swift Horses”—both in some horse-racing scenes, and the horse Elordi’s character, Julius, tows behind him in a van, a horse whose role and purpose in the narrative is, let’s say, perplexing.

Set in the 1950s, the film is about relationships, sexuality, and risk.

Lee (Will Poulter) and Muriel (Edgar-Jones) commiserate in the empty nursery of their

soul-less tract house over the realization their dreams are not the same.

One of the relationships features brothers Julius and Lee (a nicely earnest Will Poulter). As compensation for a difficult childhood, Lee longs for, and plans for, a traditional family life, with a home in California, a wife and kids, and his brother—what’s left of the family he once had—“around.” Unlike Lee, Julius has a penchant, maybe even a compulsion, for risk. He risked his life for others in Korea, lives and works for a time in Las Vegas and, with his Elvis-like good looks, enjoys a loving sexual relationship with risk-engrossed co-worker Henry (Diego Calva). Julius is also ambivalent and limited in his risk-taking. “I’ve been a thief, a faggot, alone,” he tells Henry, and he’s ready to change some of that.

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Given the social prohibitions of the era, Muriel's sexual explorations with women are high-risk.

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Muriel (a charming and intense Daisy Edgar-Jones) would seem to exist between Lee and Julius. She marries cautious Lee and moves with him from the house her mother bequeathed her in Kansas into a soul-less “Arroyo Glen” tract home in the desert outside San Diego (shades of Atom Egoyan’s 1991 “The Adjuster”). Getting tips from men she overhears talking about races at the diner where she is a waitress, she secretly goes to the track and bets on the horses. Given the social prohibitions of the era, her sexual explorations with women are high-risk. As is her attraction to her husband’s brother.

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Julius and Muriel, the central characters, are both around someone (respectively, Henry and Lee) whose dream is different from or stronger than theirs.

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Every relationship is asymmetrical or otherwise flawed, adding emotional weight to the drama. Julius and Muriel, the central characters, are both around someone (respectively, Henry and Lee) whose dream is different from or stronger than theirs, and who is unrelenting in its pursuit. Similarly, Muriel’s relationship with Sandra (look for the olive pit) falters because Sandra (Sasha Calle) is committed to a lesbian sub-culture that doesn’t engage Muriel. Even Gail (Kat Cunning), a minor character, has an uneven relationship; at the hotel bar she’s a provocative lesbian, at home she’s tied to a fat-cat husband (echoes of Cate Blanchett’s character in “Carol” [2015]).

Julius (Elordi), left, is drawn to the sexual energy of, and his love for,

Henry (Diego Calva), but not to Henry's level of risk.

Importantly for the integrity of the narrative, no one’s “bad” or “good” here—just different. Lee’s not right for Muriel—among other things, he can’t understand her cry for female independence, anticipating by a few years Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”—but he’s a good man.

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The film incorporates stories of longing and loss—of gay people trying to find themselves and their mates in a decade determined to make that close to impossible.

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Minahan’s film is also a rich visual experience. The separate (and related) stories are presented through constant cross-cutting, an editing technique usually reserved for a climactic ending, here used to heighten connections and to emphasize differences. It works. So does the cinematography, with its dark interiors and unfiltered light evoking a decade saturated with stark and often unpleasant conflicts, and yet often approached through the lens of nostalgia. The story is book-ended, over the opening credits and in a late scene, with notes and photos of a bulletin board, stories of longing and loss—of gay people trying to find themselves and their mates in a decade determined to make that close to impossible.

The script, by Bryce Kass and based on the eponymous 2016 debut novel by Shannon Pufahl, is at once subtle and “open”—that is, it allows characters the freedom to explain themselves, to elaborate, to think through what it is they wish to say. The device can also produce comments that seem too obvious, as when Gail, at the bar at the gay hangout Chester Hotel, informs Muriel that “we are all addicted to something.”

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Daisy Edgar-Jones brings to Muriel an imperfect beauty and an adventurous curiosity that make her attractions to characters as different as Lee and Sandra and Julius seem altogether reasonable.

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The cast is uniformly excellent, up to the complex roles they play. Elordi manages to layer Julius’s hunky sexuality with measures of humility and pragmatism. Edgar-Jones, perhaps best known as the un-popular high school student having clandestine sex with Paul Mescal’s popular guy in the TV series “Normal People,” here is credible as both heterosexual and lesbian. She brings to Muriel an imperfect beauty and an adventurous curiosity that make her attractions to characters as different as Lee and Sandra and Julius seem altogether reasonable.

And that returns us to the horses, of the title, and of the film. Muriel is the film’s pre-eminent risk-taker, and it makes sense that she would play the horses—that is, bet “on swift horses,” to scratch that gambling itch and, ultimately, give herself money to spend as she sees fit, some day. Lee is into security, but Muriel prefers freedom, and the horse that Julius brought to her represents just that: never tethered, unpredictable, known to run away. That’s Muriel. Then there’s the storied attraction of adolescent girls to horses (see Diana S. Fleischman, “Why So Many Girls and Women Love Horses So Much,” Psychology Today, posted online December 6, 2020). What remains unexplained is that final scene, with Julius on horseback, galloping on an asphalt highway to who knows where.

It doesn’t make sense or if so, only a kind of fantasy sense, and it doesn’t matter. “On Swift Horses” is a superb piece of film-making, deserving of something better than confinement to the corral of the art house.

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He says: Despite some trouble with the ending (Henry and Muriel on the dance floor strains credulity), “On Swift Horses” is a very good film: visually complex, rich with ideas, packed with strong performances.

She says: Apparently the film raised controversy in its marketing because it hid the queer theme, emphasizing instead Julius and Muriel’s relationship. For that reason, it may have turned off some natural audiences. That’s too bad. Hopefully it’ll find a robust reception streaming.

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Date: 2025

Director: Daniel Minahan

Starring: Jacob Elordi, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Will Poulter, Diego Calva, Sasha Calle, Kat Cunning

Runtime: 110 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

Other Awards: 1 nomination to date