I Swear is a crowdpleaser that doesn’t make a spectacle out of its subject, nor mines the darker chapters of their life for tearjerking sentimentality. It stars The Rings of Power’s Robert Aramayo as Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson. The world of his childhood, in Galashiels, Scotland of the Eighties, was one with little concept of the neurodevelopmental disorder, which manifests as a spectrum of tics – sudden and repeated movements or, in more extreme cases, such as Davidson’s, involuntary swearing or socially inappropriate outbursts.
One day, he’s a kid (played brilliantly by Scott Ellis Watson) dreaming about becoming a football superstar; the next, he can barely make it through a Yeats poem in class without his body and mind rebelling against him. The film opens decades later, in 2018, as Davidson receives his MBE at Holyrood Palace for his efforts in educating the public about the disorder. He approaches the dais. “F*** the Queen!”
