The Big Bad Swim
Amy Malone (Paget Brewster) is a middle-aged calculus teacher going through a divorce. Her soon to be ex-husband, Paul, is a fellow co-worker at Old Lyme High School and under the current situation one of them is going to have to quit - and Paul has tenure. Seeking solace, Amy signs up for a beginner’s adult swim class at her local gym. While over-coming her childhood fears of swimming, she befriends a beautiful, younger woman named Jordan Gallagher (Jess Weixler). Jordan is a kindred spirit, except she’s fifteen years younger and fifteen pounds lighter - but Jordan’s life isn’t perfect either. Along with being a blackjack and roulette dealer at the Mohegan Sun Casino, Jordan has a high paying job as a stripper across town. As the two women begin their friendship, Jordan’s eye turns to the handsome swim class teacher Noah Owens (Jeff Branson). Noah’s an ex-Olympic hopeful, paying the bills working at the New London Rec Center as an adult trainer and swim teacher. If seven years of being in therapy and out of the athletic spotlight wasn’t depressing enough, Noah’s dog just died and his local pound has some slim pickings. While Jordan is upfront about her exotic career decisions with Amy, she is certainly more secretive around her little brother and aspiring documentary filmmaker David Gallagher (Avi Setton). But with David and his best-friend Hunter McCarthy (Ricky Ullman) producing their gorilla, English class biography-video on Jordan, that secret isn’t going to be easy to keep. Especially when the camera takes an unexpected turn on the class itself and everyone is now a subject. As the film progresses we meet a fun group of phobic wannabe swimmers who overcome their fears of the water. This group includes: A local cop, an elderly woman, an eccentric mother-daughter duo and many others with their own interesting secrets. In the end, the film becomes a romantic and hopeful story about people seeking happiness and overcoming their fears. Not everyone makes it through the class, but those who do come to realize that life isn’t about learning to swim, but every once in a while, forcing yourself to get in the water.