Le Sauvage (1975)

In Venezuela, a woman (Catherine Deneuve) has second thoughts about her impending marriage and with her fiance (Luigi Vannucchi) in pursuit, she seeks refuge at a desert island populated by a man (Yves Montand) in hiding from his wife (Dana Wynter) and her business partners. A major hit in France, Jean Paul Rappeneau's comedy benefits from the colorful Venezuela and Bahamas locations. But the film's attempt at screwball comedy is only marginally successful. Deneuve's brattish runaway bride is irritating in the way Carole Lombard was sometimes irritating in her screwball comedies (MY MAN GODFREY, TWENTIETH CENTURY) and I was often wishing that Montand would just kick the crap out of her! It's a dubious achievement of sorts, I suppose, to make Deneuve unappealing. Movies about a mismatched male and female (whether by temperament or class) alone on a desert island have been made on a regular basis since the silent era so one pretty much knows the terrain but I wasn't prepared for the slapdash ending. With Tony Roberts, Bobo Lewis and Vernon Dobtcheff.