brilliant actors, brilliant editing

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is not the Tom Hanks Castaway but the Nicholas Roeg one full of complete nudity and great acting. Both Oliver Reed and Amanda Donahue are amazing as the couple who chose to live on an island for a year, and even more astonishingly this is based on real life events. Nicholas Roeg is an acquired taste and this film is strictly for cinephiles but you will be rewarded if you give it a chance.

Roeg is always interesting and challenging so I make a point of watching his films even though I don't always like them. This film reminded me of Bad Timing, in the sense that it is a movie about an incompatible couple drawn together for the wrong reasons, their relationship put under duress and under the microscope of a reality they can't escape from, until everything snaps.He has an obsessive, idealistic fantasy about living on a desert island with a woman, her reasons are never made clear, but they both seem to want the adventure so they ignore their problems during their first few months of their relationship, and embark on the survivalist project. The problems start already on the first day, with his ideals and fantasies getting in the way of real work that needs to be done, and she takes all the wind out of his sails by suddenly denying him any more sex, and nagging him to do more house-wo... I mean island-work.At least that's the way I see it. Watching this movie, I found myself constantly wondering what's going on in his mind. His mind seems to be a mess, his behaviour is extremely erratic, and everything he does is criticized by her, blatantly chauvinistic to the point of being a caricature, or just wrong. He doesn't feel like a real person. Whereas she can do no wrong, and her emotional needs are explained to death.And then it dawned on me: This is a one-sided story told only from the woman's side, consisting of rants against a man she doesn't like nor understand, who finds herself in a survivalist adventure that didn't match her romantic ideals.Imagine my lack of surprise when I looked up the credits and found that this is based on a real-life adventure book written from her point of view.Another flaw is the lack of realism and changes in their always-displayed nude bodies, Roeg having to insert awkward shots of another emaciated body to convey the idea that they are in bad health. Compare this with Tom Hanks' physical work in his desert island movie.In summary: I like the idea, I like the acting, I like Roeg's constantly challenging cinematic work and inventive methods of telling a story, but the material this is based on feels fundamentally flawed and biased, with Reed's character making no sense as a result. This is fatal in a character study.

Think: To people meetTo people gets together (Married) The night (Wedding night) The happy start. Great ides from the man (Business) More ides. Life NO so easy. 2 young men .....? Faith. Hard times. Do not take to ...Gerald do not take to Lucy. I hats you. I hats you to. I Do not understand you. I never understand you. Don't blame meAND the end.. where they are over the Skye's Loking at these life/Married (thinking) + + end of life You can easy tray it, just live the life.Tray to find the headlines in the film, and you will understand What I am trying to say. JAN

A middle-aged misogynist letch harbours fantasies of groping a woman half his age who will double as a door mat and assume the role of a sexually submissive automaton on a desert Island and advertises for the same omitting everything except the woman part in this true-ish story based on Lucy Irving's account of year with this obnoxious, overweight behemoth. This is a gap year with a difference, in this case the gap between reality and the ignorant daydreams of a couple of selfish, moronic Londoners. If this introduction implies you should feel some sympathy for Irving then forget it. If Gerald Kingsland, as portrayed by Oliver Reed was as crass and obvious as one of those sex cards you find in phone boxes then Irving, as played by Amanda Donahoe is a priggish middle class suburbanite who tires of the grind of city living and facts of life like crime and Royal weddings and so imagines that she alone, despite having no idea how it might be done, will travel thousands of miles to be self-sufficient and uses Kingsland to make this a reality. Initially she's not going to let anything, even the facts, get in the way of this protracted venture to la-la land. She ignores the warning signs - Kingsland's obvious fear of female intelligence, the fact that he's had to advertise for a "wife" in the first place, his obvious interest in sex with a woman 20 years his junior and even, in a wonderful example of the will to ignorance, the way he contrives to spend all their money before they've left, forceing Irving to marry him in accordance with Australian immigration law. Some women might bale out at this stage and cut their losses but those sandy beaches are quite the lure and the two sad-sacks go anyway prompting 12 months of predictable implosion in which Kingsland angrily resents Irving's lack of sexual interest while she alone is astounded by his laziness, toe curling advances, crudity and total lack of survival instinct. In fact 9 months in and the two have virtually died from malnutrition. If Irving had hoped to spend a year bathing naked while Kingsland built the house and grew the food, she's as deluded as the old man who hoped to spend 12 months engaged in vigorous intercourse, pampered by his new wife in idyllic surroundings. This is a fascinating story but its impossible to feel anything but irritation at these two characters and Roeg does nothing to pull us toward either of them. He seems content to be a bit of letch himself, focusing on Donahoe's nakedness while mercifully sparing us shots of Reed's reed. Ultimately Irving's story confirms something we already knew, namely that Robinson Crusoe is a great story but it makes a lousy lifestyle choice for a mismatched couple from west London who would normally get no closer to the life of self-sufficiency than a visit to M and S. It wouldn't have taken us a year to figure it out either. Pity they had to come back.