After attempting historical dramas and multi-character urban sagas, John Sayles returns here to the kind of small, intimate film with which he first established his reputation.
PASSION FISH opens on a typically vivid Sayles image: soap opera actress Mary-Alice Culhane (Mary McDonnell) lying immobile in a hospital bed, watching herself walking and talking on TV. The nurse tells her she's been paralyzed from the waist down in a traffic accident (she was on her way to have
her legs waxed), but her fear and anger have immobilized her as well: she refuses to participate in her physical therapy, and drowns her sorrows in endless TV watching and drinking. Moving back to her Louisiana Bayou hometown, Mary-Alice goes through a succession of caretakers ranging from Russian
authoritarians to biker chicks. The last hope for this self-proclaimed "bitch on wheels" is the quiet Chantelle (Alfre Woodard), who needs the job badly enough that she can't quit, but refuses to indulge Mary-Alice's tantrums. Both women, it turns out, are trying to start over in life, grappling
with new identities and responsibilities, and their isolated situation, as well as the subtle magic of the bayou, soon begins to change them.
Never maudlin, and never opting for big dramatic climaxes, PASSION FISH succeeds most of the time, thanks to a typically deft Sayles screenplay and two fine, understated performances from McDonnell and Woodard. For viewers willing to accomodate themselves to its rhythms, which are as unhurried as
its bayou setting, Sayles has cooked up an affecting story, one that takes the audience on a slow ride into the swampland with two of its denizens, trying to re-define themselves in the second act of their lives. leave a comment
