The film opens with John collecting his MBE for activism and shouting out "fuck the queen" eliciting nervous giggles from my theatre. The first half of the film, directed and written by Kirk Jones, depicts a confident young John before any symptoms occurred. He asks a girl out on the first day of secondary school, he’s a star goalkeeper and rides around on his bike bumping blue Monday.
When John develops his tics the unforgiving nature of high school and the harsh attitude towards neurological conditions in the 80s are portrayed unflinchingly. At home his mother (Shirley Henderson) banishes him away from the table to face the fireplace when eating due to one of his tics being to spit food.
John becomes heartbreakingly isolated, until he meets a mate’s mum Dottie (played by Maxine Peake with a dodgy Scottish accent) who encourages him to stop feeling so ashamed of himself. He slowly gets a job as a caretaker at a community centre but every inch John progresses, life throws him back a mile: he gets brutally beaten up after ticcing at a girl in the street, he gets his own flat then spends the night in jail after an outburst of "I’m dealing drugs" in front of two police officers, he gets off medication then he goes to court for starting a fight in a club because of his disorder.
After meeting other people with Tourette’s, initially sitting in a car with one and having to wait for their tics to stop comically setting each other off for a few minutes, John starts to build a community and educate the police, teachers and doctors who had previously discriminated against him.
I Swear is a film that depicts the hardships combined with the objectively hilarious parts of having Tourette’s it seeks to create empathy understanding and all with a classic British soundtrack.