Swiped
When a tech entrepreneur (Lily James) has her idea swiped, this emotive feminist history lesson refuses to let go of its grip.
The Was ‘It Girl’: Lily James
Image courtesy of Disney+.
A long, long time ago, in 2012, a start-up in Los Angeles was trying to develop a dating app called MatchBox. Just one day before a key brainstorming session, Whitney Wolfe (Lily James) wasn’t even an employee of the company, but she exhibited such a zeal and display of the smarts that CEO Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer) promoted her from a nobody to his official marketing director. As the largely male team of employees grappled with such sexy new names as TLC, Courtship, Hook and Canoodle, Whitney suggested Tinder. She also developed the intuitive right-swipe, left-swipe motion to earmark or discard a potential date. And while slower sectors of the campus dating market still preferred a live hook-up, she convinced them otherwise by hitching the hottest jocks and cheerleaders onto the app.
There has been a slew of recent films dramatizing the extraordinary rise of famous brands. Two years ago was particularly fruitful with such titles as Air, The Beanie Bubble, BlackBerry, Flamin' Hot and Pain Hustlers, while Barbie was a brand unto herself. But too often the rise to prominence is depicted as a laborious, uphill affair, whereas Whitney’s ascent through the ranks of anonymity was meteoric. And so Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s snappy, kinetic film mirrors the breakneck speed of the start-up, a world in which those who ascend the giddy heights can vanish just as quickly. These days a million users can appear overnight and make a star of the next Internet entrepreneur. Whitney Wolfe was one such, whose chutzpah, creative juices and good looks spun her up the corporate ladder. However, when Time magazine published an in-depth feature on Tinder, Whitney wasn’t even mentioned…
Like such trailblazers as Ada Lovelace, Rosalind Franklin and Mary Anning, Whitney Wolfe was devalued by a toxic male environment. As a story of sudden success and funny first dates spirals into a narrative of misogyny and cancel culture, we are already so invested in Whitney’s adventure that we are left hanging by her designer coattails. Lily James has excelled in such films as Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Yesterday and What’s Love Got to Do with It?, but she has never been this good, shifting with consummate facility from an ambitious creative to a cornered lioness. As the “dick pic” dilemma blights Whitney’s idealistic vision, the actress glows and then glowers, her performance, along with Goldenberg’s dynamic direction and the incendiary subject matter, making Swiped a pertinent, emotive thing. And a line like “having a female co-founder makes us look like a joke” really does stick in the craw.
Fellow Downton Abbey alumnus Dan Stevens is less successful as a rival entrepreneur (Andrey Andreev), whose jokey Russian accent makes him a caricature, although strong turns from Myha’la and Coral Peña keep us engaged. And can it really be true that the first image used as a test case for digital image processing was that of a naked woman? Apparently so: it was a reproduction of a 1972 Playboy centrefold and after its debut at the University of Southern California it became an industry standard. We had such a long way to go.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Lily James, Jackson White, Myha’la, Pierson Fodé, Ben Schnetzer, Dan Stevens, Ian Colletti, Mary Neely, Ana Yi Puig, Coral Peña, Joely Fisher, Clea DuVall, Dermot Mulroney, Michael Nourri, Gregg Daniel, Christopoher McDonald.
Dir Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Pro Lily James, Jennifer Gibgot and Andrew Panay, Screenplay Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Bill Parker and Kim Caramele, Ph Doug Emmett, Pro Des Hillary Gurtler, Ed Julia Wong, Music Chanda Dancy, Costumes Beth Morgan, Dialect coaches Elizabeth Himelstein and Joy Ellison.
20th Century Studios/Ethea Entertainment-Disney+.
93 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 19 September 2025. Cert. 12.
