Passion Fish: A Review

 

PASSION FISH

A current trend today is to suggest that only a woman can write and/or direct a film about women. This is why such films as The Marvels and the 2019 version of Little Women needed to be directed by women. I do not think that only women should direct a female-centered film in the same way that I do not think that a woman cannot make a male-centered film. A good example of a man crafting a well-made film around women is John Sayles' Passion Fish. While I think its runtime is much too long, Passion Fish gives us what now seems a struggle: strong women who have flaws.

Soap opera diva Mary-Alice Culhane (Mary McDonnell) has been left paralyzed after a car accident. Written out of her show, she is miserable in her condition. Fortunately, she is a woman of independent means, so she goes to live in seclusion and moves back home to Louisiana, where she is originally from. Here, Mary-Alice drowns her sorrows in booze and sarcasm, driving all the caregivers sent to her away or finding that they do not work well together.

That is until the newest caregiver in this cavalcade comes. That is Chantelle (Alfre Woodard), who finds this "bitch on wheels" difficult but who is willing to tolerate Mary-Alice because she needs stable employment. The push and pull between Mary-Alice and Chantelle leads them to slowly accept the other. While not friends, they begin to see a bond start slowly building. 

This is in tandem with their relationships to two men. For Mary-Alice, that is Rennie (David Strathairn). He is a good Cajun boy whom Mary-Alice knew in her early years. While they are smitten with each other, Rennie is a married man with five children. He builds her the ramp for Mary-Alice's wheelchair, but both know that it can go only so far. That kind of physical and emotional limitation is not in the cards between Chantelle and horse trainer Sugar La Deux (Vondie Curtis-Hall). Charming and rakish, unashamed of his way with fillies of all kinds, Sugar is sweet on Chantelle, who initially rebuffs him. However, she too falls under Sugar's spell, and a relationship begins.

As Mary-Alice and Chantelle begin accepting the reality of their situations, they also have the past come for them. Mary-Alice has a chance to return to her soap opera in a revamped version, but at a cost that she does not want. Chantelle has a chance to reunite with her young daughter Denita (Shauntisa Willis), currently under the guardianship of Chantelle's father, Dr. Blades (John Henry Redwood). Will either or both find what they need in the swamps of Cajun country? 

Passion Fish (the title coming from a legend that Rennie tells them about a particular swamp critter) is two hours and fifteen minutes long. While the Academy was well-pleased with the screenplay enough to give Sayles a Best Original Screenplay nomination, I felt that it sometimes went on too long and dragged. I sadly confess to nodding off from time to time, puzzled over why Passion Fish was so long. I figure that some scenes, while pleasant to amusing, could have been trimmed or cut altogether. There was the scene where the Robineaux sisters Ti-Marie and Precious (Nora Dunn and Mary Portser) came to visit their high school frenemy Mary-Alice. There was when Chantelle has an unexpected encounter with Sugar's daughter. We could have had a shorter montage of the various caregivers who, for one reason or another, were not suited for Mary-Alice's temperament. 

I understand that the last one was there to build up for when Chantelle finally came in. However, I think we got the point early on. That is probably Passion Fish's greatest flaw, but it is a long one.

Separate from that, Passion Fish works well in almost every other respect. Mary McDonnell received the other of the film's two Academy Award nominations for her performance as Mary-Alice. She elevates what in other hands could have been a stereotype: the formerly agile woman who now depends on others to move about. She is prickly, sarcastic, sometimes downright mean. However, we also see the hurt, regretful, and frightened woman. We even see a sometimes more relaxed manner, such as when she reunites with some of her former castmates, including an early appearance from Angela Bassett as a former costar. 

Passion Fish is a double act, which makes it difficult to believe that Alfre Woodard was not nominated for her performance as Chantelle. She is not a saint nor a longsuffering caregiver. Woodard makes Chantelle a strong but vulnerable figure. She knows when to push, when to pull back. She also brings her own struggles and issues to where she becomes relatable. Chantelle has her own problems for which she is working to correct. Her journey is just as fascinating as Mary-Alice's. Perhaps a reason why Passion Fish is so long is that it gives as much time to Chantelle's journey as it does to Mary-Alice's. It does not make it any easier to accept, but it does make it balanced.

The film's two male characters are also complex and interesting. Strathairn is a bit hard to accept as this good old Cajun boy. Granted, his Louisiana bayou tones are nowhere near as cartoonish as Channing Tatum's accent was in Deadpool & Wolverine, so he has that as a positive. He also brought a shy manner to Rennie, someone who had a yen for Mary-Alice but who never could get the deal closed. He is a good man, someone who is clearly fond of Mary-Alice but who could not betray his wife and kids for her. Curtis-Hall's Sugar, who also has a good old Cajun boy manner, is delightful and charming as the very confident love interest. He is a man who not only knows the way to a woman's heart (and bed) but who delights in his way with the ladies. He is roguish, but we end up falling for him the same way that Chantelle does.

Passion Fish also has the benefit of beautiful cinematography and is filled with great zydeco music. 

I understand that many nowadays think that contemporary filmmakers struggle in making films about women. Sometimes they are shown as fluttery, other times as fierce. Passion Fish manages to create a female-centric story with complex characters. It is probably far longer than it should be, but on the whole Passion Fish works as a dual character study of women who are distinct yet similar in their struggles.

DECISION: B-