Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Strong and Moving!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

What marvelous Italian sensibility! Italians have to be muted for drama, but give them comedy and they soar, it's who they are, who we are in general down South and all over the Mediterranean - boisterous, frivolous, yelling past each other out of some need to stay afloat, lest the silence bogs us down.The allegory is of course as obvious as the characters, a shrill rich wife and a grumbling sailor, a communist we're told, on board her yacht during a cruise get stranded in a deserted island. Of course the dynamics shift - we see how easy and quick it is for him to become a tyrant now that he has the upper hand, how degrading for her to be ordered about. But then sex enters the picture and that changes everything; she's beaten around, almost raped and comes to love the submission. As thin as the politics may be, so much more subversive when it becomes sexual. Rape fantasies are common in men and women alike, no reason to hide, and nothing peculiar about it - sex is after all in a primal way about the swap of power. But here just as about the fantasy is about to be consummated, at the peak of sexual paroxysm, this is the moment the filmmaker chose to have the man pull back and be revealed a delusional fool - she must cherish him as her god and so on.The question that looms, a deep deep one, is was it the island? Or is it civilization that obscures? Which of the two shows their true self? Eventually they bond as lovers, but that is based on everything else we've seen. Do the limits imposed by being seen and known in public lead into delusions of self? Or does uninhibited freedom? Was it true love or was it a simple desire that found no limits to run up against? Who's to make all these impositions of truth anyway?And we have to counterpoint all this against the richness of how they hold themselves in each other's eyes, some of the most expressive eyes in film - it's perfectly cast anyway, but the eyeplay between the two is marvelous, starting from that moment they share on the deck one night.So this is fascinating stuff, about limits of self, about a slippery passion and having no logical truth that can explain beyond it, the only thing it asks is that you don't be moral about it. I can only imagine it better in Pasolini's hands, this lover of textures and breezes of air.

Cinematography: superior. Writing: excellent. Acting: somewhat over the top in the political arguments yelled at top volumn. Sexual chemistry between the proletarian and 'aristocrat': Priceless.I found myself mesmerized. The huge eyes of the man, as he listens to the bigoted arrogant arguments of the beautiful woman are amazing, as you can see the tension and anger building. Turns out, he is a devoted communist, not a follower of the totalitarian government in Russia...so often confused with true communism, but a devoted communist. One of those.We are about to go crazy with the stupid mindless arguing by these rich people on this gorgeous yacht, when finally we are rescued by the imperious bikini-girl, demanding that she be taken to the others to fish at 7 p.m. Of course, we all know that they won't get there, as the motor kicks out and they wander around in the middle of a gorgeous sea. No one seems to ever have to go to the bathroom, unfortunately. Just as well. No, they don't get thirsty either.But the acting, especially the fury between them which resolves itself into hot, flaming sex that she has to beg for is glorious!!!! It is definitely NOT what you would expect.Spoiler*****************8 When finally united with his wife, he asks tenderly about the kids. So you know, he can't return to that magic island where all the love was white hot. That's not real. But when he takes the 100000 lire and buys a beautiful ring for the woman, you know that he is showing todo el mundo that he is indeed a man, buying her this 'divorcement' ring....already knowing she'll reject his invitation to return to the island.Great movie. I"m glad I bought it, and I WISH there was one of those discussions on it to give us some insight into the Italian government of the 70s. I was confused by the discussion of the Pope, fascism and communism. Had I known the political climate of Italy at the time, I might have understood this part better.

With dialogue such as "Madam, I am f*&%ing you", I tend to disagree. Bad camera work, miserable editing. I am being generous by giving it a 3 rating. The only redeeming quality was the poetic justice aspect to the story.

A film that's exceedingly difficult to pin down. It would be easy to dismiss it, but it's just as easy to be startled and amazed by it. The story's simple enough: a shaggy, dark-skinned man (played by Giancarlo Gianni) works under the thumb of the bourgoisie on a hired yacht. He despises them, and they despise him. One of these rich people is particularly annoying, a blonde woman (Mariangelo Melato), who spends her days incessantly bitching, spouting capitalist slogans, and putting down the servant class. These two characters, not surprisingly, end up together on a dinghy whose motor has broken. She never shuts up, he stares at her murderously. They eventually land on a deserted island, where he refuses to help her whatsoever. She eventually has to submit to whatever abuses he chooses to dish out. Yes, that does include physical and eventually a near-rape, which will certainly disgust and upset a lot of the film's audience. The film can actually be sort of perverse. I'm sure many have marvelled that, with some of the film's crueller scenes, the film was directed by a woman. It is actually, in its way, nearly as perverse at some times as The Night Porter, directed in the very same year in Italy, also by a woman. That film's merits are more dubious than Swept Away's, however. The film is unexpectedly hilarious, at least for the first forty-five minutes or so. When the abuse starts, the film begins to shift to a social issues picture. Class issues are important, as well as racial issues (which kind of amount to the same thing). I didn't mind seeing the woman verbally abused - she spent the first forty-five minutes doing the same to the guy. The smackings she receives were hard for even me to take, however. The politics are nevertheless exceedingly interesting. The film has some very good material on the social constructions of class. After this section of the film, the story shifts to erotica, and it is very erotic at times. In this section, the film is a direct descendent of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (as was The Night Porter, incidentally). After that, the film shifts once again to romantic melodrama, as the two are rescued. The man makes the decision to signal a yacht that he sees in the distance simply because he wants to test the deep love that the woman swears by. These shifts in narrative can be clearly felt, like upshifting in a manual transmission vehicle, but it works rather well. I was always right with the film with its emotions (although it took me a good twenty minutes to get into the film). I ended up rather loving it, despite its flaws. Now I actually want to see the Madonna version to see how bad that hack Guy Ritchie screwed it up. At one point in the film the man tells the woman that she looks like the Madonna. Pretty funny, no? 9/10.