Tiff25: ‘swiped’ review

By Nadia Dalimonte

Lily James in Swiped

​The online experience is absolutely horrific for women. Sexual harassment, death threats, cyber bullying, body dysmorphia, hate speech, and more denigrating content have fed into an incessantly dangerous environment. It’s not just the perpetrators and their deceptive personas causing harm. Online platforms and apps are also complicit in breeding misogyny and toxic masculinity, whether by design (in a male-dominated tech industry), or by practice. Social media has completely changed the way we interact with one another, and it has made dating in this digital age all the more precarious. Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd aimed to rewrite outdated gender roles with a female-empowered dating app - on Bumble, women make the first move. Her rise to billionaire status is depicted in Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Swiped, a film that too often swipes left on what makes its subject so interesting.

Whitney (Lily James) wanted to make the world a better place. Her first business venture was selling bamboo tote bags to areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She also volunteered at orphanages around Southeast Asia, where she got the idea to create a program that connects likeminded people together. Ready to make her mark in the tech industry, and eager to meet potential investors, she runs into Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), the co-founder of a startup company that throws ideas to the wall in the hope that one of them will stick. Sean immediately hires Whitney as the company’s marketing director for a new dating app, which Whitney would go on to name Tinder. After months of market research and pitching to universities, she helps turn the app into a worldwide success.

With her professional and personal life soaring, Whitney seems on top of the world. She starts dating one of her colleagues, Justin (Jackson White), who can’t contain his jealously when Whitney officially becomes a Tinder co-founder alongside him. Justin’s mean-spirited behaviour takes an even darker turn when they break up, and his harassment starts to affect her work environment. When she does speak up, she is bullied into silence, further illustrating why women don’t feel comfortable standing up for themselves. One of the film’s biggest strengths is the depiction of toxic masculinity, particularly in the pre-#MeToo era, that has poisoned the corporate culture and forced women out of the decision-making rooms. This will strike a chord not only relative to the tech industry, but across all industries where women are harassed and undermined at every turn. As the only woman in the room at Tinder, Whitney feels pressure not to cause any trouble, adhering to the expectation that women ought to be grateful for holding high-ranking positions, and that putting up with harmful behaviours is “part of the job.” 

The story of Swiped may be based on noteworthy subject matter, but the film falls flat in its execution. The writing glosses over nuanced conversations in favour of a by-the-numbers biopic approach that cherry picks the highlights of Tinder’s success, Whitney’s downfall, and the creation of Bumble. The film takes an incredibly rushed, straightforward path in depicting her accomplishments and shortcomings. While she created Bumble to foster an environment where women support each other, she herself liked being the only woman invited to the table at Tinder. In contributing to the toxicity to feel like “one of the guys,” she neglects the work of her friend and colleague (a very underwritten role played by Myha’la). The film does very little to challenge Whitney’s lack of support for women during the Tinder chapter, and inexplicably rushes through her development of Bumble, which leaves behind an underwhelming conclusion. 

The strongest element of Swiped is Lily James’s performance as Whitney. James brings compelling charm and gravitas to the role. She excels at conveying both the ambition and vulnerability that the tech industry, and specifically her male colleagues, feed off. From workplace misogyny and corporate greed to targeted harassment, James navigates the film’s thematic foreground while also creating a grounded person to root for. James also does not shy away from Whitney’s contradictions; a particularly effective scene reveals that she chose to climb the corporate ladder at Tinder without bringing other women alongside her. But her talents are ultimately wasted in a limited character study. The real Whitney had no involvement in the film due to an NDA agreement that prevents her from discussing anything pertaining to Tinder. As a result, the film continuously defines her by the corporate role she plays, falling short of grasping the nuances of who this woman is. 

While James turns in a reliable performance, and the themes reverberate with a greater reach than the tech and dating spaces, Swiped stumbles as both an effective character study and biopic. Goldenberg’s generic direction and a cliched screenplay approach Whitney Wolfe Herd’s legacy with half-hearted curiosity. By cherry picking her greatest achievements and lowest moments on a strictly professional level, the film limits its narrative and creative scope. Wolfe Herd’s character becomes neglected outside of her involvement in the apps that are, ironically, designed for people to understand each other on a more personal level.