It is the misfortune of this waterlogged British indie to be a true-life drama about a female endurance swimmer, coming out when people are still talking about Annette Bening in the Hollywood underdog heartwarmer Nyad, also about a female endurance swimmer. Nyad cuts powerfully and confidently through the water. This film, sadly, seems as if it’s got cramp after picking up a dozen verrucas in the footbaths.
Kirsten Callaghan plays Mercedes Gleitze, the young Brighton swimmer of German parentage in the 1920s on a mission to become the first British woman to swim the Channel, but facing snobbery, sexism and xenophobia at every stroke. Her main competitor in the female Channel-swimming stakes is the haughty Edith Gade (Victoria Summer), a notorious cheat – based on the discredited swimmer Mona McLennan – whose scandalous fakery contaminates Mercedes’s honest efforts and forces her to repeat her Channel crossing with a “vindication swim” when the weather was too rough for the attempt.
