PASSION FISH
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: John Sayles's latest film is a nice
pleasant story of two women learning to get along and survive
with each other. This leisurely story of a paraplegic and
her nurse learning to deal with and then help each other has
few surprises, but it does do a detailed portrait of its
major characters. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4).
May-Alice Culhane (played by Mary McDonnell) was once the queen of the soaps. Then a reckless taxi driver turned her into an unemployed paraplegic. She wakes in a hospital with no memory of the accident and with a vicious attitude toward life. She determines to return to her family home in Louisiana's Cajun country to drink, watch television, and generally pity herself. In this state she goes through several nurses. Either she could not stand them or they could not stand her.
Finally, Chantelle (played by Alfre Woodard) is sent by the agency. Chantelle wants the job, but has little experience and a bad background. Surprisingly, she is a natural at dealing with May-Alice. Each battles the other and has enough need to put up with the other's bullying. Chantelle starts seeing a man from town while May-Alice strikes up a friendship with an old potential beau, Rennie (played by David Strathairn). Rennie is already married with five children and May-Alice's condition makes sex impossible, but there clearly is some interest.
John Sayles both wrote and directed PASSION FISH, taking his time to do it right. In showing us some of May-Alice's old friends, Sayles is able to have some fun at the expense of the soap opera industry and at overly demure Southern womanhood. The film is longish at 134 minutes, but it does not drag. Some of the Louisiana scenery is very well photographed. I give PASSION FISH a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[Seen at the Montgomery Theater in Rocky Hill, NJ.]
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzfs3!leeper
leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews