[2] The screenplay was by Allan Scott, adapted from the eponymous 1984 book by Lucy Irvine, telling of her experiences of staying for a year with writer Gerald Kingsland on the isolated island of Tuin, between New Guinea and Australia.

In 1981, Lucy Irvine responded to an advertisement placed by writer Gerald Kingsland, and they became self-imposed castaways for a year on the isolated and uninhabited island of Tuin, in the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia.

When Irvine met director Nicolas Roeg, he felt her story was perfect material for telling a relationship between an older man and a younger woman.

"[11] Variety wrote: "Newcomer Amanda Donohoe spends most of the pic displaying the absence of bikini marks on her body (palm trees always seem to obscure the vital parts of Oliver Reed as Gerald Kingsland), and she copes well with a character whose motives and methods for going to the tiny desert island remain dubious.

Reed gives the performance of his career as a sexually frustrated middle-aged man in search of sun and sex, and is admirably complemented by Amanda Donohoe as the determined but fickle object of his lust.