Muriel, a waitress in 1950s America, seems to be the quintessential June Cleaver. She's got a loving husband, a suburban house with a white picket fence in California and nice outfits. But not everything is as it seems, like her secret gambling. And her eye for a neighbor.
“On Swift Horses,” based on Shannon Pufahl’s novel of the same name and adapted by Bryce Kass, is all about how a dominant culture can suppress natural impulses. More specifically, it's a queer tale set against the post-Korean War status quo.
“We are all just a hair’s breadth from losing everything, all the time,” Muriel is told by a woman also hiding her truth in plain sight.
But despite a brilliant performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones, “On Swift Horses” gets lost in a meandering plot and clunky symbols, including olives, atomic bomb tests, a tiny gun and a horse, the universal sign of the unbridled self that is just sort of dumped here. The execution is often slack and then veers into melodrama in the last 15 minutes. And there's a weird noir vibe that doesn't really work.
That's a shame because a film dealing with hidden homosexuality is very relevant as some forces seem to seek to return America to the '50s — two genders, no queer accommodation, definitely nothing trans.
The neat and tidy world of Edgar-Jones' Muriel becomes unmoored by the emergence of Julius, her husband's brother. Julius — played by a forever-smoldering Jacob Elordi with an ever-present cigarette, which goes from acting prop to crutch — brings an anarchic energy. He's a cad, but a lovable one.
He recognizes something in Muriel — a wistfulness, a restlessness. “I think you see all through all of it,” he tells her. She soon overhears horse racing tips at work and uses them to earn thousands, hiding the winnings from her husband. She also seems to connect in a flirtatious way with neighbor Sandra (Sasha Calle, excellent).
Meanwhile, Julius has ended up in Las Vegas, falling in love with a co-worker, played by a soulful Diego Calva. They're employed by a casino to watch over gamblers and make sure there's no cheating. They are basically pairs of eyes removed from the world, watching from a perch above the action.
The Julius storyline — the push and pull of whether these two closeted men should be outlaws or live in the system — yanks focus from Muriel's storyline. Gambling is used as a metaphor for being queer at a time when it was dangerous, but it rarely lands.
Director Daniel Minahan and the cast concentrate on small coded gestures — a glance, a lingering touch, a matchbook passed along — to indicate desires, but they are undone by massive symbols, like that silly horse.
One moment sticks out that has no dialogue at all: a powerful scene where Muriel's husband unexpectedly finds his wife outside the neighbor's house and they share a silent ride home. His mind is turning just as the wheels do.
Edgar-Jones shows equal parts vulnerability and steeliness, superb at communicating what her slippery character is really feeling even as she blends in on the outside. Heartbreakingly, she turns to her husband (Will Poulter, underwritten) at one point and asks: “Did you ever want this?”
“On Swift Horses” belongs in the same category as other hushed ’50s-set same-sex romances, like Todd Haynes’ “Carol” or Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” But this adaptation hasn't made the leap to the screen very well. Sometimes swift horses stumble.
“On Swift Horses,” a Sony Pictures Classic release, is rated R for sexual content, nudity and some language. Running time: 119 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Daisy Edgar-Jones and Diego Calva attend a special screening of "On Swift Horses", hosted by Sony Pictures Classics and The Cinema Society, at Regal Essex Crossing on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Diego Calva attends a special screening of "On Swift Horses", hosted by Sony Pictures Classics and The Cinema Society, at Regal Essex Crossing on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Daniel Minahan and Daisy Edgar-Jones attend a special screening of "On Swift Horses", hosted by Sony Pictures Classics and The Cinema Society, at Regal Essex Crossing on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin wound his way through the tunnels beneath the Milano Ice Skating Arena on Friday night, trying in vain to explain — or even just understand — exactly what went wrong in an Olympic free skate that could only be described as a disaster.
Out in the arena, Mikhail Shaidorov was taking a victory lap wearing the gold medal everyone expected the American to win.
And playing over the loudspeakers: Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida,” and the lyrics that begin, “I used to rule the world ...”
In one of the biggest upsets in figure skating history, Malinin fell twice and made several other glaring mistakes, sending the “Quad God” tumbling all the way off the podium and leaving a star-studded crowd in stunned silence. And that cleared the way for Shaidorov, the mercurial but talented jumping dynamo from Kazakhstan, to claim the first gold medal for his nation at these Winter Games.
“Honestly, I still haven't been able to process what just happened,” Malinin said. "I mean, going into this competition, I felt really good this whole day. Feeling really solid. I just thought that all I needed to do was trust the process that I’ve always been doing.
“But it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics,” he added, “and I think people (don’t) realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. So it was really just something that overwhelmed me and I just felt like just I had no control.”
Out of control is a good way to summarize the performance.
The 21-year-old Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.
Then there was Malinin, also 21, who dropped all the way to eighth. The two-time world champion finished with 264.49 points, his worst total score in nearly four years, and one that ended a two-plus year unbeaten streak covering 14 full competitions.
“Honestly, yeah, I was not expecting that,” Malinin said. “I felt going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.”
Much of Malinin' journey during the Milan Cortina Games had felt a little bit off.
He was beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, later acknowledging for the first time the pressure of winning at the Olympics was starting to get to him. And he still wasn’t quite his dominant self in the team free skate, even though a head-to-head win over Sato was enough to clinch the second consecutive gold medal for the American squad.
But by the time of his individual short program Tuesday night, Malinin’s fearless swagger and unrivaled spunk seemed to be back. He took a five-point lead over Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa of France that seemed insurmountable going into Friday night.
“Going into the competition,” Malinin said, “I felt like this is what I wanted to do, this is what we planned, this is what I practiced, and really just needed to go out there and do what I always do. That did not happen, and I don’t know why. ”
Malinin had decided to practice early in the day at U.S. Figure Skating’s alternate training base in Bergamo, just outside of Milan, and that gave him a brief reprieve from the pressure of the Olympic bubble. And he was the essence of calm throughout his warmup, never once falling in all of his practice jumps while wearing his familiar glittering black-and-gold ensemble.
Then came the performance that might well haunt Malinin for the rest of his career.
As the atmospheric music with his own voice-over began, he opened with a quad flip, one of a record-tying seven quads in his planned program. Then he appeared to be going after the quad axel that only he has ever landed in competition and had to bail out of it.
Malinin recovered to land his quad lutz before his problems really began.
He only doubled a planned quad loop, throwing his timing off. He fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second half of the quad lutz-triple toe loop combination. And in his final jumping pass, which was supposed to be a high-scoring quad salchow-triple axel combination, Malinin only could muster a double salchow — and he fell on that.
“He never messes up,” Italy's Daniel Grassl said, “so obviously we’re all a little surprised by how it went.”
By the time the music stopped, Malinin was left trying to mask his sorrow for a crowd that included Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion, along with seven-time Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles, actor Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Emilie.
"I knew that I could not have necessarily a perfect program and still manage to have a good skate. But just really, something felt off," Malinin said, “and I don’t know what it was, specifically. I’m still trying to understand what that was.”
Shaidorov seemed just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal.
He was only in sixth after the short program and an afterthought as the night began. But the world silver medalist, known for high-flying jumps but maddening inconsistency, delivered the performance of his life, landing five quads in a technically flawless program.
“It was my goal,” Shaidorov said simply, when asked about the gold medal. "It’s why I wake up and go to training. That’s it.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan reacts to his scores after competing during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan competes during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Ilia Malinin of the United States does a back flip while competing during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ilia Malinin of the United States falls during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ilia Malinin of the United States wobbles while competing during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
