The Swan is the second of four Roald Dahl short stories that Wes Anderson produced for Netflix. It follows the rather brilliant Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar but is, itself, not so wonderful.

The short is about a kid who’s being bullied… and its only about seventeen minutes long so I won’t spoil the bits and bobs… though I guess it’s no spoiler to say there’s a swan in it.

It’s told in a similar fashion to Henry Sugar in that the actors read the text of the story directly to camera in a quick, clipped sort of way. The set is minimal and the film crew moves things along as if shooting a play.

I didn’t care for this one very much but it’s ultimately just ok… and I’m a little annoyed they didn’t just roll these shorts into a single anthology film. But here we are.

I think my problem is that the story is pretty slight and the storytelling too minimal. The conceit of the limited set and the way the story is shot and acted was just TOO minimal, too limited. The artifice got in the way of the okish story.

I didn’t hate it… it was almost too short and insignificant to hate. But it was disappointing after how good Henry Sugar was. I’m hoping the next two are better.

Score: 75