Here at the Screengrab, we have an irregularly scheduled feature known as "Forgotten Films", which we use to discuss beloved, or at least interesting, movies that seem to have fallen through the cracks of moviegoers' memories. But what about those films that, while deservedly forgotten, will never be forgotten enough for some people's liking? Films that, in addition to sucking like a Hoover and a half, can only serve to represent the sore spots that their makers would much, much rather they'd never booked into theaters and charged admission? To inaugurate what we suspect will be an even more irregularly scheduled feature devoted to these very special films, today we exhume Guy Ritchie's Swept Away.
THE MOVIE: The British writer-director's third feature is a remake of Lina Wertmuller's 1974 cocktail-chatter classic (whose full title is Swept Away...by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August), with Ritchie's wife, Madonna, and the Italian actor Adriano Giannini taking over the roles originated by the luscious comedienne Mariangelo Melato and Wertmuller's favorite leading man (and Adriano's father) Giancarlo Giannini. Madonna is an obnoxious, motor-mouthed rich bitch--excuse the sexist characteriation, but in both the original film and the remake, that's very much the idea--whose rich tycoon husband (Bruce Greenwood) has plunked her down on a yacht touring the Mediterranean. The ship's fisherman (Giannini) takes exception to her non-stop prattling, her hateful attitude, and her politics, and when, through an outrageously contrived quirk of circumstance, they wind up stranded together on a deserted island, where her money counts for nothing and she is dependent on his manly survivor skills, he takes full advantage of the tables having been turned. Their new relationship begins with him whacking her repeatedly in the face and quickly blossoms into a heated love affair. But then they are rescued, and the movie dares to ask: can the crazed-rutting-weasels romance between a rich dame and a working-class stud survive the artificial pressures that society will thrown up against it?
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