Film

Driftwood (1996)

Director: Ronan O'Leary

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Man washes up, wounded and without memory, on windswept Irish shore. Woman takes Man back to remote cottage, tending his crippled leg, and telling him she's the island's sole inhabitant and he can't leave till the boat brings supplies in three months' time. Weeks pass. Man, attracted and grateful, sleeps with Woman, but still plans to leave; Woman, between sculpting naked Men and having intense conversations with her dead mum, plans otherwise. This determinedly arty, allegorical and anaemic look at the emotional and psychological power plays that constitute male-female interaction comes across as a lame rip-off of such female-fruitcake fare as Misery, Images and Repulsion. At best it's gynophobic, at worst misogynistic - though Spader's amnesiac no-name seems incapable of committing, that's peanuts compared to the neurotic disorders displayed by Anne Brochet's Sarah, whose smothering, possessive obsession pushes her from simple repeated deceits to deadly violence.

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