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...