Wow! Such a good movie.

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Such a frustrating disappointment

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Independent film making is to be commended because it brings a different view about things that are so over blown by mainstream Hollywood fare. That said, it's completely incomprehensible the negative comments generated by "Passionada". This film, directed with style by Dan Ireland, deserves better than what has been written in IMDb.Most of the venom directed to "Passionada" seems to be about its authenticity and the ethnicity of the characters being misrepresented by the cast assembled. Those complaints are baseless. Do the same people that put it down have anything to say when they watch other mainstream films that have no logic at all? I don't think so. Lighten up, people it's only a film that aims at entertaining its viewers."Passionada" is a small film about loss and redemption told in cinematic terms by a cast that plays well together. Jason Isaacs, the card sharpie Charles Beck, finds love with the dark and sultry Celia Amonte, played by Sofia Milos. Their love grows in spite of all what Charles hides from his past.Lupe Ontiveros, an excellent actress, doesn't have much to do in the film, but then it's not her story we are watching. Emmy Rossum is the rebel daughter. Seymour Cassel and Theresa Russell are fine in their small roles.The town of New Bedford, Massachussets, serves as the perfect background for this romantic comedy.

After reading all the glowing reviews on this site for this movie I wonder if I saw the same movie. To me it was little more than a made for TV movie shown on the Lifetime channel on a Sunday afternoon. First of all, the plot and lives of the characters did not ring true. We saw the mother at work once. We never saw the daughter going to school, yet she stayed out all night at the casino. The mother let her daughter meet people from the internet? The dialogue was stilted and the acting was bad. The mother asked "What?" several times. That was annoying. I cringed at the performances of Vicky, Grandma, Lois, and Lois' husband. The movie dragged on and on. Oh, well. Such is life.

"Passionada" is all about Milos as a beautiful Portuguese widow and cabaret singer who mourns the loss of her fisherman husband while her daughter and gambling prodigy Rossum consorts with professional card player Issacs to get good old mom out of her funk. The result is a beautifully shot film with marginally interesting characters and an uneventful story which spends most of its time with Issacs courting a reluctant Milos with his English accent and glib patter. The film wanders somewhere between romantic drama and romantic comedy not taking a firm position thereby diluting its ability to be engaging in either genre. Nonetheless, romantics and sentimentalists will appreciate this languorous but pretty film with a cosmopolitan flavor. (B-)

When I saw PASSIONADA the first time (it have been recommended by someone I truly admire) I was very put off. I didn't like it, I thought it was, well, nothing. The person who had recommended it in the first place, urged me, to see two other Dan Ireland movies. The Whole Wide World, which I loved and "The Velocity Of Gary" which I thought it was hard to sit through, the first time, but, I must say, I felt compelled to see it a second time and by my third viewing I was in love with the movie. Then I went back to Passionada. What a different movie it was, within the context of Ireland's other work. It is the perfect piece of the puzzle that unveils the total work of an artist's life work. Ireland's theme is LOVE, AS AN IMPOSSIBLE OBJECT. In the Whole Wide World, is intellectual and tragic in Velocity of Gary, is sexual and pathetic in Passionada, he allows the characters to have a future. It is, after all, Ireland's romantic comedy. But even then, we don't really know, if we listen carefully to a throw away line by Theresa Russell "Once a liar, always a liar" (Or words worth that effect) To all film fans, I suggest to see the films in order, one after the other and you'll discover something to look forward to.