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."

Nick Roeg did something which I am sure is way above most viewers' heads. A man decides to spend a year away from the madding crowd (who doesn't want to?) and takes a woman with him. So far, so good. But the man is so far removed from reality that he does not prepare properly, ignores warnings (they do not come at him as his normal world would deliver them: you should not, danger, etc. - friendly advice he sloughs off as inferior) and nearly starves to death. BUT, here's the interesting part, in his own mind he sees it all as idyllic and wants to continue. He creates his own fantasy i his head and lives there, while in truth he and the woman are starving to death. Anorexia anyone? If you know someone who believes in their own reality, make them watch this movie as psychotherapy. Will they survive? Watch and find out.

This is based on a true story of a couple who were left on one of the Great Barrier Reef Islands east of Australia. I don't think this was filmed on location for the whole story, such as itis, revolves around the couple's efforts to survive in an unfriendly environment. There is good reason that natives do not live there. If you want to see half-naked people in tropical environments then watch the Survivor TV series. There is good reason for there not being a Survivor-Greenland or Antarctica. As to the north woods, the flies and mosquitoes would eat up the contestants, clothed or not along with having to endure long cold winters. The only reason to watch this is to study Amanda Donohoe's epidermis. But even that gets old after a while. Edit out Reed and the scenes set elsewhere and you might have a half hour stroke film. Otherwise forget it. The premise is because the couple cannot forage enough sustenance, she and Reed are gradually are gradually starving to death. In fact, neither appear to have lost any weight so the director keeps flashing a shot of the upper torso of some emaciated woman to make the point. But it is always the same shot. Though AD is nude most of the time , there is never any full frontal so this is rated B for boring and R for ridiculous.

Two people who barely know each other, spend a year on an island together. They suffer malnutrition, stormy weather, and just plain I'm-sick-of-you-itis. I managed to catch this movie a while back on cable. I love watching movies from England, Australia or New Zealand because they're so different from what I'm used to. This movie didn't disappoint there. There was only one thing missing from this movie to make it totally realistic. Amanda Donohoe played a young, presumably fertile woman on an island for 12 months and never so much as had PMS, if you catch my drift. Forgive me, but as a woman, this is something I think of *whenever* I think about being stranded *anywhere* for months at a time. All in all, though, a very entertaining movie.