In Caracas, Nelly (Catherine Deneuve) is engaged of Vittorio (Luigi Vannucchi). However, after the engagement party with his family, she calls off the commitment and flees from him lodging in a hotel. Vittorio pursues her but the middle-aged French guest Martin (Yves Montand) helps Nelly. She seeks out her former employer Alex Fox (Tony Roberts),who owns a night-club and owes one-year salary to her, but he does not help her. Nelly steals a valuable painting from his office and heads back to the hotel, hiding in Martin's room. He gets a ticket to Paris for her and leaves her at the airport. Then he sails on his boat to an island where he lives alone. When Martin arrives, he finds Nelly waiting for him in his house. She explains that customs did not allow her to leave Venezuela with the painting. Soon his peaceful life of hermit becomes Hell on Earth, but they fall in love with each other. However Vittorio and Alex are still chasing her.

"Le sauvage" is a silly but funny romantic comedy. Catherine Deneuve is gorgeous and her devilish character is totally amoral. There is no reason why men fall for her but her beauty. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Selvagem" ("The Savage")

Vibrantly photographed, with a more casual, less refined than usual Catherine Deneuve (in one of her rare forays into slapstick comedy) at her most beautiful, but shrill, mostly unfunny, and way overlong; the would-be husband's character (an Italian caricature) is particularly unendurable. *1/2 out of 4.

Ugghh. I love French films but truly disliked this film. Considering it stars Catherine Deneuve and Yves Montand, you sure would expect it to be well written and engaging. Well, unfortunately, it's not. In fact, for much of the film, I truly hated Catherine Deneuve's character--so much that I was longing for Montand to kill her...slowly and very painfully! This is NOT a good thing if you are trying to make this film a romantic comedy!!

The film starts with Deneuve marrying an obnoxious Italian man who behaves like a mobster with less self-control than Joe Pesci in GOODFELLAS. Through most of the film, he yells and behaves like a Moose during rutting season. It's no wonder, then, that Deneuve soon disappears--realizing she made a mistake. However, in a "kooky" move, she spends the next half of the movie using every man that comes near her. Her old boss (Tony Roberts) owes her some money, so she steals his Toulouse-Lautrec painting (worth many, many times what he owes her). When nice guy Montand hears Deneuve and her husband arguing like hyenas, he comes to help her--and she manages to nearly get him killed, uses him to get plane fare and never once says thanks.

At this point, I am seriously wondering if I've ever hated any woman in a film this much in recent memory...but it gets much worse. Instead of taking the plane, she sneaks off to an island where Montand lives very happily all alone. She never asks to stay but begins acting like the island is hers. He gets angry and puts her aboard his boat to take her back to the mainland and she responds by getting an axe and tearing the hull apart--sinking his boat and stranding them on the island. After that, other "amusing" things she does is steal his food, tries to lock him in the basement and take the house for herself and pouts...a lot. I'm thinking to myself that there is nothing funny or romantic about any of this, yet oddly they then sleep together. She responds by then ignoring him for most of the rest of this film. What a wretched, demanding and self-absorbed "lady".

Late in the film, Deneuve's husband finds her and takes her back. Oddly, you'd think Montand would be thrilled but since this is a romantic comedy, he then realizes how much he loves her (!?) and goes looking for her once he's able to get off the island! What a contrived and witless script!! Sadly, while Deneuve was the main focus of the film, her selfish character was pretty but 100% vacuous and unlikable. On the other hand, Montand had a wonderful backstory that was interesting...too bad there wasn't nearly enough time to delve into it and explore it completely--especially when after being taken to New York, he suddenly magically returns to Venezuela (where most of the film occurred). This is a great case of "scene missing here" logic! Overall, you've got a script so horrible that Julia Roberts would even refuse to be in such a contrived and unlikable romance. Badly written and a total waste of the stars' considerable talents. This is just brainless and hard going from start to contrived finish.