The Girl in a Swing is a 1988 American supernatural erotic drama film directed by Gordon Hessler and starring Meg Tilly, Rupert Frazer, Nicholas Le Prevost, and Elspet Gray.

Based on the 1980 novel The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams, the film is about an English antique dealer who travels to Copenhagen where he meets and falls in love with a mysterious German-born secretary, whom he marries.

On a business trip to Copenhagen, he hires a German-born secretary, Karin Foster (Meg Tilly), to do some clerical work—she is fluent in English, Danish, and German.

Her actions reflect both a quiet sensitivity (crying during a classical concert) and a dispassionate coldness (breaking the neck of an injured seagull).

During a conversation about Karin's unmarried friend Inge and her child, Alan makes an offhand comment that he would have trouble marrying a woman with a child—the remark clearly upsets her.

In conversations with Alan and the vicar, Karin explores the connection between spiritual love and physical love—a notion she believes is absent in Christianity but embraced by pagan cults.

Realizing she knows what is causing these strange events, Alan shuts all the doors and windows, and closes the drapes, but the cries continue in the garden during a violent storm.

Before leaving, he discovers the receipt for the green tortoise toy and realizes to his horror that she bought it for her daughter just before killing her, out of fear that Alan would reject her with a child.

In a review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave The Girl in a Swing two and a half stars, writing, "I would have appreciated some kind of resolution to the story—instead of the confusion into which it eventually disappears.

This is Tilly's second role recently as a mesmerizing woman—after the underrated Masquerade—and she creates a genuinely original performance, a woman sometimes dreamy, sometimes intense, and always in pain.

"[4] In her review in AllRovi, Linda Rasmussen wrote, "The film is not entirely successful due to the leisurely direction of Gordon Hessler and the lack of pace needed to create genuine suspense.

But despite this flaw, the sensitive performance of Meg Tilly makes the film well worth watching and is a haunting psychological exploration of obsession, passion and guilt.