I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Passion Fish (1992)I wish I could like John Sayles films more. They want to be so important and serious, about exceptional people in normal working America. Characters are dying to be felt for and understood, and the turns of events are poignant in simple ways we can relate to.So it is with Passion Fish, with a couple changes. For the first long part of the movie the main character, an ex-soap opera star recently made paraplegic, is completely unlikable. But eventually we come to appreciate her attitude, and other characters arrive, namely a nurse who can stick it out with her.So if all this sounds good, it is. But the writing is a little off, a little wrong, all the way through. Occasionally it's just a strain (I laughed out loud a couple times at it, not with it). There's not problem with the subjects and what they do, but what they say, a hair off key from what such real people would say. Or that's the sense you get. And the filming is adequate without being magical, or emphatic, or whatever it is that great movies pull off. The camera-work, the editing, the clunky addition of sounds, it's all a little crude, as if it didn't matter that it was just functional and used a few cheap devices (like a little montage sequence with snippets dissolving one into another like a sentimental ad). In fact, it has a television quality even though Sayles has never done t.v. as far as I know.If you are really into content, though, and real people with real problems, none of this will matter as much. And the compensations include gritty acting, which makes the most of the dialog. If this lack of style is your style, you'll like it. If you want formal intentions of any kind you might think it's slow and unartful.

John Sayles directs "Passion Fish". The plot? Soap star May Alice (played by Mary McDonnell) is rendered a paraplegic after a freak automobile accident. She soon finds herself housebound and cared for by Chantelle, a live in nurse played by Alfre Woodard.Like most films in this genre – "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", "Driving Miss Daisy", "The Waterdance", "My Left Foot", "The Whales of August", "Persona", "Cries and Whispers", "The Defiant Ones" etc – "Passion Fish" revolves around shifting power relationships. Here, May is a wealthy but crippled white woman and Chantelle is (or seems to be) an impoverished black woman who nevertheless has the full use of her body. Each depends on the other. What Sayles does is trick us into making parallels between privilege, race and servitude – even though the film's power dynamics work perfectly well as a literal, social comment – only to then later reveal that Chantelle is herself a wealthy woman, with a father who is a doctor.Our double take, our need to reassess our typecasting, is mirrored to the very reappraisals our stars are forced to make throughout the film. And so May reverses her snobbish attitude toward her home town, blacks, her art and locals, whilst striking up a relationship with a man called Rennie (played by Sayles regular David Strathairn). In a similar fashion, Chantelle reassess her role as an assistant, a woman of servitude, and her own racial prejudices.Late in the film it is revealed that Chantelle is struggling to overcome a drug addiction. The film then draws broad parallels between both women's debilitations, the point being that struggles cross all divides and that recovery is made easier in a world in which we all hold hands. This aspect of the film – and Sayles' ending – is very hokey, very maudlin. But most films which deal with racial issues in such a manner risk a condescending, trite, self congratulatory tone. Sayles' filmography is littered with such naive, on-the-nose preaching. Better to tackle similar issues indirectly, invisibly, and at off kilter angles. Still, the film is packed with good stuff. On the outskirts of the film's worn-out melodrama are numerous beautifully subtle or unconventional scenes. Mary McDonnell's performance is itself interesting – watch how she lets her accent reassert itself at several key points – and the film's Louisiana's backdrops are suitably moody (Sayles aesthetic is amateurish, but his scripting makes up for this).The film's title is conjured up best during one scene in which an actress invests considerable time and energy into elevating a trashy movie scene about aliens administering anal probes. The point: don't violate yourself by seeking fulfilment in hollow, vile pursuits and don't turn your back to genuine passions. Case in point May, who eschews small town life in favour for what she now realises is a grubby movie world populated by ditsy idiots, and Chantelle, who likewise turns her back to the people she loved and grew up amidst. But doesn't Sayles' somewhat patronising view of "them big city folk" undermine the very message of his film?7.9/10 – Like most of Sayles' best films, the actual narrative framework is more intelligent than the film's content (see Sayles' "Limbo). The way the act of watching the film is interwoven with the way the character's themselves watch and transform is genius. The film's actual content, though, is pure Hollywood "big issue" cheese, typical of a Paul Haggis, Steven Spielberg or Stanley Kramer.

Apparently Sayles never sat around a table with a bunch of women gabbing. In "Passion Fish", which tells of a NYC soap opera actress who becomes a paraplegic and begins a long rehab in her Louisiana home town, the women at the table never talk over each other and only one talks at a time. Such histrionics are an example of the good and the bad of this very palatable, spoon fed Sayles product which strikes a nice safe middle ground on all the issues it plumbs. If good films follow the rules and great films break the rules, this flick is dead on good. Not risky fare but very well received, "Passion Fish" is one for the masses....especially the distaff. (B)

This film surprised me a lot. I liked it very much. It was well-written, acted, and worth watching Mary McDonnell who received her second Oscar nomination for this performance. Alfre Woodard should be nominated for best supporting actress. I was surprised to find two equally challenging roles for women in an almost extinct era. The relationship between the two women grows slowly. It is nice to see friendship between these two very different characters. May Alice becomes a likable person after awhile. Angela Bassett has a small role as her friend from New York City. David Straitharn plays an old flame who has since married and remain local in the Louisiana swamps of their hometown. It's a great story overall with characters that you grow to like over the time we spend with them.