Driftwood

When an unknown man with amnesia (Spader) is washed up on a secluded beach of Northern Ireland, he is taken in by a solitary eccentric spinster (Brochet)and it becomes immediately apparent that she has "control issues." Since he has a broken leg, he's temporarily at her mercy and tries to humor her as she becomes increasingly strange. Brochet plays "Sarah" so well that the viewer soon surmises that beneath her elfin winsomeness lies some dangerous emotional and mental instability which will eventually erupt. She succeeds in seducing the stranger and thereafter regards him as her personal possession. The arguments with her old harpy of a mother are telling. When the couple have a special candlelit dinner commemorating his sexual surrender, she appears wearing a weird lacy gown strongly suggesting the mad Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations." Viewer interest will be maintained until the inevitable tragic result of the man breaking free of the coerced relationship which bears a familiar parallel in reverse to "The Collector."

Do not bother with that!Poor acting(particularly Spader),poor directing,poor cinematography with no sense of space at all.Nudity scenes do not make up for the paucity of the screenplay.The mother trick ,which Alfred HItchcock (and Robert Bloch )invented ,has been used so many times only a very naive viewer will be intrigued.Even the murder recalls "Psycho".Absolutely nothing redeems that.Stay away.

It's a movie about a woman who finds a man on a seashore next to her home. She is a sculptor, she takes him in, he doesn't remember his name, she tells him they're alone on the island. To us it's obvious she's lying, and a matter of time that they will end up in bed and he'll find out she's lying. Not boring, just not very interesting. And her talking to her deceased mother is really redundant. The ending is SO annoying and foreseen. Probably a nice story, bad movie though.

In Ireland, the lonely artist Sarah (Anne Brochet) finds an unconscious castaway (James Spader) drowned at the beach with a broken leg. She brings him home and treats him. When he awakens, he has amnesia and can not remember who he is or what has happened to him. Sarah tells that they are isolated in an island and a boat will arrive with supplies only a couple of months later. However they are indeed in the continent but Sarah hides the location from the man. Along the days, she feels obsessed by him and she seduces him and they have a love affair. When he feels better, he decides to snoop around trying to leave the island. But the deranged Sarah will do anything to keep him with her.

"Driftwood" is a suspenseful romance with a story of loneliness, insanity and obsession. The plot uses parts of the storyline of "Misery" and other films of attraction. Anne Brochet gives a great performance and has a great chemistry with James Spader. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Prisioneiro da Ilha" ("Prisoner of the Island")

We enjoyed this movie quite a lot. Anne Brochet's character, Sarah, was a spinster, a psycho, yet quite erotic. James Spader is always good, and he did a great job going from confused to falling in love to fearing for his life.

There were a couple of strange problems that ruined things for us a little, though. The story was set in the islands off Ireland, yet Anne Brochet did not try to hide her strong French accent. I don't remember an explanation of her being French. Her mother appeared as a ghost, and her mother had an English accent. Huh???

The sex scenes were great, Anne Brochet has a fantastic body. We didn't think they were overdone or gratuitous.

Overall, it was a great movie. Intriguing and a nice look inside the mind of a strange, isolated person. Was the plot predictable? Yes. But that's okay sometimes.