The last seven minutes were missing from the print I saw so I don't know what happens after the number of relationships gets bumped up from one to six. If someone dies, I don't know about it.
I've always admired the best of Nicholas Roeg's work because, as with Peter Weir, there's always something odd going on, simmering just beneath the surface. Libidinal impulses just dying to be discharged.
It's not usually clear what they are, but here it's not clear that they exist. It's possible to be compulsively hypervigilant, to look harder for pattern than the thing looked at will ever provide. Oliver Reed and Amanda Donahoe, two strangers, agree to marry in order to spend nine months on a tiny, uninhabited tropical island. They argue openly. Is that all there is? Reed gets to mutter about "secrets within secrets" but there's nothing much unusual or hidden about a man wanting sexual intercourse from an uncooperative wife, and the wife in turn constantly nagging the husband. "Secret", my insect-bitten foot! I still like Nicholas Roeg despite thinking that this is one of his lesser efforts. After all, he hired my little boy as an extra in the compelling and immediately forgettable "Track 29." "Castaway" is not a total failure. It's not marred by multiple flashbacks and flash forwards. There is a confusing dream sequence or two involving the moon and fellatio, I think. But the performers do a crack job with this nebulous material.
Amanda Donahoe looks great -- in or out of clothes. She has thin lips but her features are clean and sleek. Her figure is peerless.
The scruffy Oliver Reed is a delight. We first meet him at a swimming club in London, plump, flabby, and repulsive. But on the island, he's lost weight, acquires a sienna tan, and is full of mischief. He's supposed to be a writer but his reading is limited to self-help books (I think that's a joke) and his recitations are bawdy limericks with none of the naughty bits left out. At one point, desperately randy, he describes a series of dishes from London restaurants while Donahoe writhes with desire. Their toes wriggle spastically, and Reed says, "That was better than sex, wasn't it?" However, if there is a hidden message or even a shallow mystery, I didn't even catch a hint of it. The only message I was able to discern was, "You can take the boy and girl out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy and girl."
I've always admired the best of Nicholas Roeg's work because, as with Peter Weir, there's always something odd going on, simmering just beneath the surface. Libidinal impulses just dying to be discharged.
It's not usually clear what they are, but here it's not clear that they exist. It's possible to be compulsively hypervigilant, to look harder for pattern than the thing looked at will ever provide. Oliver Reed and Amanda Donahoe, two strangers, agree to marry in order to spend nine months on a tiny, uninhabited tropical island. They argue openly. Is that all there is? Reed gets to mutter about "secrets within secrets" but there's nothing much unusual or hidden about a man wanting sexual intercourse from an uncooperative wife, and the wife in turn constantly nagging the husband. "Secret", my insect-bitten foot! I still like Nicholas Roeg despite thinking that this is one of his lesser efforts. After all, he hired my little boy as an extra in the compelling and immediately forgettable "Track 29." "Castaway" is not a total failure. It's not marred by multiple flashbacks and flash forwards. There is a confusing dream sequence or two involving the moon and fellatio, I think. But the performers do a crack job with this nebulous material.
Amanda Donahoe looks great -- in or out of clothes. She has thin lips but her features are clean and sleek. Her figure is peerless.
The scruffy Oliver Reed is a delight. We first meet him at a swimming club in London, plump, flabby, and repulsive. But on the island, he's lost weight, acquires a sienna tan, and is full of mischief. He's supposed to be a writer but his reading is limited to self-help books (I think that's a joke) and his recitations are bawdy limericks with none of the naughty bits left out. At one point, desperately randy, he describes a series of dishes from London restaurants while Donahoe writhes with desire. Their toes wriggle spastically, and Reed says, "That was better than sex, wasn't it?" However, if there is a hidden message or even a shallow mystery, I didn't even catch a hint of it. The only message I was able to discern was, "You can take the boy and girl out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy and girl."