Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto

Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (1974)

a film by Lina Wertmüller

Sometimes is much more easy to write about the films I don't like that about the films I like. The reasons why I don't like this movie that was commercialized in English as Swept Away, are so specific that I find it hard to find something I like about the movie, but I will do my best. But first let me write what is it about.

During a fancy vacation on a fancy sailing boat in the Mediterranean, one of the rich and glamorous tourists -a woman so annoying that boggles the mind-, gets into a fight with one of the members of the crew, with such a bad luck that after a storm, the two of them end up in a deserted island where their social tensions are washed away and the give up into a deep romance.

The main problem I had with this movie is that I didn't believe anything of what was happening in the film. I couldn't believe the main character, annoying as the character required but endlessly boring in her shallowness. I couldn't believe the guy that is stuck with her in the island, too slow to become the skilled castaway. I couldn't believe the storm and I could not believe the passionate relationship that they develop on the island, so overwhelmingly misogynous and brutal that even exceeds the hyperbolic cartoon that these characters are.

Movies are about believing. What we see on the screen is not real but we choose to believe because we like to explore the story, we like to be fooled to enjoy what the film has to deliver. But when the lie is evident, the spell is broken and you see the implausible in the screen. That was my experience in this movie, once I stopped believing, the comedic situation of these cartonish characters became just sound and fury.