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Swept Away

By John Anderson | Staff Writer

October 11, 2002

( No Stars) A remake of Lina Wertmuller's 1974 beach movie by wife-and-husband team of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, either of whom could cite it as grounds for divorce. With Madonna, Adriano Giannini, Bruce Greenwood, Jeanne Tripplehorn. Written and directed by Guy Ritchie. 1:33 (vulgarity, nudity, adult situations, sex, bad taste, bad acting, bad judgment). At area theaters.

Ah, a moral dilemma. How to describe the complete and utter wretchedness of Madonna's "Swept Away" without somehow implying that it is somehow campy, ludicrous fun.

It is not fun. It is, however, bad. In fact, new ways of describing badness need to be invented to describe exactly how bad it is. Last year at this time, with everyone reeling from Sept. 11, the idea of going to see another pop star-cum-useless actress - Mariah Carey - in something as awful as "Glitter" seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to put the brain on hold.

There's no excuse this time around. "Swept Away" not only meets the usual requirements of atrocious moviemaking - embarrassing acting and inept direction and unspeakable screenwriting and visual illogic - it is also just plain lazy.

And strange. What kind of superstar, if in fact that's what Madonna is, would mount a vanity project in which she plays a spoiled, rich, ill-tempered, ill-mannered, leathery, wizened socialite who is sexually domesticated by an Italian fisherman after they're washed up on an otherwise deserted island? Lina Wertmuller's original had enough problems, political and dramatic, but at least it attempted to create a parable about sex and class. Madonna, as overwrought as she is playing the snarling rich witch, is even more unbearable when tamed, because her lack of acting talent precludes any chance that she would actually inhabit such a character. Her liberated if not actually feminist image remains, as it were, chaste. And we sit there grossly insulted.

Guy Ritchie? This guy couldn't direct a dog food commercial if he had a pack of ravenous Rotweillers and a platter full of porterhouse. With apparently no idea how to actually develop the antagonism between Amber (Madonna) - whose apathetic husband (Bruce Greenwood) has rented the pleasure boat - and Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini, son of the original's Giancarlo), who's has been hired to help man it, Ritchie resorts to a series of episodes in which Amber demeans Giuseppe above decks, and Giuseppe complains to comic kitchen staff below. Somewhere in between, there's a whole lot of transition being lost in the translation.

We wade and slog through meaningless slo-mo, cliched quick cuts and the various manifestations of Amber's thoroughly despicable personality (which would assuredly have gotten her tossed overboard by any self-respecting crew, or husband) before getting to the point: Amber and Giuseppe's ill- planned off-boat trip (her fault), the breakdown of their motorized dinghy (his fault), the shooting of said dinghy with flare gun (both their faults) and the two being deposited more or less safely on an uninhabited but incongruously picturesque and inhabitable island (God's fault). Enter the hormones.

Amber tries to assert her class status, but the fed-up Giuseppe (or Pepe or, a la Amber, PeePee) knows how to survive on fish and collected water and reduces his former mistress to a virtual slave, which really turns her on. None of this is believable. What is believable is that a husband is directing his wife in a sex movie.

There's no one else around, but every time Amber and Giuseppe do the "From Here to Eternity" thing on the beach, his trunks and her bikini remain securely in place. When the two actors are nude, they are positioned safely away from each other and in quasi-fetal positions (Lest they see each other?). It's nice to see an actress and director so in love.

If anything above has led anyone to even entertain the idea of seeing "Swept Away," we apologize and offer some advice: If Madonna is ever washed up on a beach near you, throw her back in.