You really have to watch out, when it comes to women directors, for the extent to which they tend to be overrated and for the venomous quirk that prompts some to treat their heroines more nastily than any male director might. Though Lina Wertmüller has made a couple of interesting pictures (notably The Seduction of Mimi, a good sex comedy that managed to triumph over its political pretensions), her negligible Swept Away … has been … irrationally over-praised lately….

[The opening sequence] means to show the Italian elite splashing around in the Mediterranean but is shot so unimaginatively (and scored with such irritating Muzak) that it looks like a travelogue about Hawaii…. After fifteen frenzied and excruciating minutes, [Raffaella and Gennarino] manage to get marooned on a lovely desert island and begin to indulge in some wonderfully broad comedy, when the script does them in. Gennarino, realizing he is suddenly in control of the situation, is called upon to starve, berate, beat, kick, rape (although he doesn't complete the act, for fear of her enjoying it), and generally abuse [Raffaella]. Even worse, she is called upon to like it. (p. 268)

Does it really matter that in the interim, as he slaps his prey, [Gennarino] is shouting things like "This is for causing inflation, and for not paying taxes … this is for high bus and train fares, and the high price of gas"? The bearing of this whole little fable on the political issues it name-drops is dubious at best.

You can search until you're blue, but you sure won't find any evidence to support claims that this is meant to be funny, either. True, the whole situation is clichéd enough to suggest deliberate parody, what with its role-reversal and desert-island motifs, not to mention its startling naïveté in relation to Wertmüller's other films. But the would-be tragic ending is too dragged-out and maudlin to be the result of even a light touch, let alone a clever or ironic one. And despite the numerous and unpleasant ways in which she makes [Gennarino] look foolish, Wertmüller is just sympathetic enough with her hero to throw off whatever balance her initial conception may have had. Hovering as it does between two genres as irreconcilable as overblown comedy and politically based cynicism, Swept Away … winds up being deeply annoying and not much else. Despite its wonderfully eye-catching poster shot of two bodies embracing in the surf, and despite a plethora of postcard sunsets and romantic-looking dunes, the picture is far too shrill to elicit any physical response except maybe a headache. (pp. 268-69)

Wertmüller's direction is no better than ordinary, with her few attempted bravura shots lavished on subjects that don't deserve them. (The fanciest one here swiftly circles a yacht, perhaps to show that it's surrounded by water.) And Wertmüller's abrupt cuts have an uncanny way of suggesting that the projectionist has slipped in the wrong reel. (p. 269)