Passion Fish

(1992)

Directed by

John Sayles

Review by Zach Saltz

Some critics will call John Sayles a layman’s Robert Altman, and while the two men’s paths have been very similar (Sayles and Altman are both Hollywood mavericks who are not afraid to tackle larger-than-life issues) I think their films parallel and seamlessly compliment one another.  They’ve made movies set in similar places (the Pacific Northwest of Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Sayles’ Limbo), have focused on similar subjects (the political shambles of Altman’s Tanner ‘88 and Sayles’ Silver City), and have profiled similar moods (the vast urban discontent of Altman’s Short Cuts and Sayles’ City of Hope).  Viewing the two directors together usually makes for an illuminating and sometimes confounding experience.

In that respect, Sayles’ Passion Fish (1992) compliments Altman’s masterful 3 Women (1977) in many ways.  Both are stories of women healers, who invest so heavily in their patients that, by the end of the film, the bond between patient and healer has become all but transparent, as the two enter an extraordinary oneness with each other.     But where 3 Women veers into the metaphysical, Passion Fish stays just this side of the line of reality, though there are indeed a couple of scenes that convey something discreet about its two character’s interactions.

The two women of Passion Fish are May Alice (Mary McDonnell), a wisecracking soap star who has been rendered paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a freak car accident, and Chantelle (Alfre Woodard), the nurse who cares for Mary Alice in her brawny house deep in the Louisiana bayou.  The early scenes in the house serve as a time for reflection for May Alice, who watches old episodes of her soap, downtrodden and upset that she will never be able to return to her luxurious life as a television celebrity ever again.  She doesn’t believe that she will ever recover -- physically and mentally -- from the accident, and sees her life, and any feeble attempts to improve it, as utterly meaningless.  She goes through about five in-home nurses, each of whom tells her colorful stories of their own lives, as she passively listens, withholding the anger she feels, until she displaces it later by refusing food and promptly driving the nurses up the wall.

Enter Chantelle, a svelte black woman who has just arrived on a Greyhound bus.  She does not tell May Alice about her life, and it remains a mystery most of the film.  Their relationship is quiet at first, but as May Alice opens up her box of inadequacies to the young nurse, Chantelle remains cool and loyal.  “Didn’t they tell you I was a bitch?” May Alice asks her one day out of the blue.  “On wheels,” Chantelle replies.

Sayles is a master of character study and, as in practically all of his films, he introduces us to a wide array of colorful personalities.  Many people visit the house, including May Alice’s Uncle Max (Will Mahoney), a kind of six-pack Ernest Hemingway, some of her old childhood friends (including a wonderfully faux blasé woman named Precious), and some of her old soap friends.  Love interests for the two women enter the picture in the forms of hearty (and happily married) Rennie (Sayles regular David Strathairn), and the smooth-talking Creole Sugar LeDoux  (Vondie Curtis-Hall).  But practically all of the screen time is devoted to the interactions of these two characters, who are so multi-dimensional in their intimacy and arguments that it sometimes makes the viewer feel like an uncomfortable spectator. 

Some may mistake Passion Fish as boring, and while it is admittedly slow at some portions, I suspect Sayles is trying to portray the boredom the characters feel, being trapped in a place neither of them truly want to be.  The pacing is meticulously crafted, like Lone Star -- just when we think we’ve got these characters figured out once and for all, Sayles lays a bomb on us that grabs immediate attention.  This self-constrained flow makes the film not technically diverse as Lone Star because it does not have to be.  There is some great music on the sound track, and occasionally, Sayles will shine a red light on his characters -- the red light of a developing room, and the red light of a glorious Bayou sunset.  And there is a key dream at the end that suggests the bond between the two protagonists is deeper than we think; that they have literally entered each other’s minds and

Sayles and Altman are two of the finest unconventional American directors around, and 3 Women and Passion Fish are excellent examples of laconic, rural mise-en-scene transcending its characters into the ethereal, whether overtly or subtly.  Both films and their directors have something to say, which is so rare in American filmmaking these days, and their films have the remarkable ability to say so much while simultaneously telling us relatively little.  The two women of Passion Fish may very well embody the spirit of Sayles and Altman, their worlds and families so separate, yet their visions and eccentricities so similar and oddly familiar.

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