Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August

Swept Away is an absorbing movie, it tells a story we get involved in and it's often very funny.

Wertmuller is everything Kubrick is not -- sloppy, incoherent, rambunctious, playful, perverse and every inch a film artist... Her lightness has the intoxication of pure afflatus.

Even as an ironic read, it is hard to stomach the film’s misogyny (notably in the portrayal of the wife to whom Gennarino returns), and its class and political critiques are muddled in favour of a survival-of-the-fittest mentality.

Swept Away is the kind of art movie that anyone can get a huge kick out of, whether or not old foreign films are your bag.

Although still in the running for the title of Worst First Date Movie Ever, Swept Away is a film of remarkable audacity that remains as vital and provocative—and, lets face it, sexy—as ever

Northerner and Southerner sizzle and hiss, trading vulgarities with withering force. Once they’re stranded, their hostility gives way to a complex and sensual relationship.

Disheartening and incomprehensible.

Swept Away... is disappointing because it raises difficult questions about sex, class and eroticism which should be explored by women directors; yet its impact is to reinforce many man-made myths.

This film is nothing less than anti-woman. That the director and producer was a woman is irrelevant.

Swept Away, whatever the shortcomings, is a rare motion picture experience.