Swept from the Sea Review

Swept From The Sea, based on Joseph Conrad`s novel Amy Foster, is set in Cornwall in the 19th Century. The story, such as it is, unfolds in flashback as a grumpy doctor (Ian McKellan) reveals to Miss Swaffer, Kathy Bates, as he treats her gangrenous leg, why he detests the buxom Amy, Rachel Weisz. Some time earlier, a ship was wrecked on the treacherous coastline, the only survivor a wild Russian, Yanko, Vincent Perez, who, not surprisingly, had difficulty communicating with the locals who thought he must be mad.Yanko falls for Amy, and the kindly Miss Swaffer gives them a cottage by the sea -- but fate steps in. Director Beeban Kidron handles what should surely have been a passionate, erotic epic, as if she were directing a vicarage tea party. There are lots of smouldering gazes, but very little in the way of genuine feeling and excitement; there are plenty of wild storms, loads of thunder and lightning, but it`s all hollow and empty and seriously uninvolving. The actors are so constrained by the corseted direction that they can make little of their roles, and the very slight -- and, as presented here, unlikely -- story hardly sustains a film of this length.