Emulating the victory of Bruce Beresford’s DRIVING MISS DAISY (1989), John Sayles’ PASSION FISH is another buoyant ode to interracial friendship, trying to mollify the racial divide stateside and feebly convince viewers that everything is tickety-boo.

Mary-Alice Culhane (McDonnell), a successful daytime soap actress whose life disrupts and career hits a moratorium after rendered paraplegic in a taxi accident, becomes an embittered, cynical shut-in in her Louisiana home, and strikes up a bond with the African-American lived-in nurse Chantelle (Woodard), who has her own personal demons to overcome.

Mary-Alice is shown as an open book, footloose (not in a literal sense) and fancy-free, parentless, childless, no relative visits her except for a paternal uncle Reeves (a Burmester). She might be rotting in her booze-infested solicitude, channel-zapping misery and self-pity all for one cares (get some upper-body strength woman!). Sayles certainly doesn’t want to make her sympathetic and McDonnell is splendid to project all Mary-Alice’s bristles and even owns up that she is a “bitch”. Only when her road of convalescence begins in the right orbit, a mellowed Mary-Alice is decidedly a less intriguing character, taking photography as an avocation sounds very Hallmark.

With regard to Chantelle, mystery and secrecy is her impression in default, even when she warms up to Mary-Alice and the two share some sort of communion, both are fish of the water in the Cajun territory (Chantelle is from Chicago and Mary-Alice is the one who gets away and makes good in the Big Apple), she never divulges her most personal experiences, everything about her checkered past is discovered by Mary-Alice accidentally. Woodard unleashes the most dignified facade to hold court, Chantelle is a bit different from the “magic negro” stereotype, she has more problems than her charge, and Woodard’s rendition is a master class of ambiguity, restraint, leeriness and collectedness, that said, when she hits out, her force is inexorable, surely condescension can be acted out both ways.

Sayles interlocks the two protagonists’ lives with several themes in parallel, like their individual detox processes (Mary-Alice’s bibulous addiction is a mote in Chantelle’s eyes), and the romantic males (both women have dreams or reveries of carnal knowledge) to whom they act against their best judgement, Mary-Alice’s feeling for Rennie (Strathairn), a quondam classmate, is border on limerence and vice versa; whereas a virile Ulysses LeDoux (Curtis-Hall) is clearly a pickup artist, and Chantelle’s involvement is a self-revealing act of her vulnerability rather than sexual attraction. However, they are only sideshows, and Sayles is sensible enough to not make heavy weather of them.

If the story inevitably heads to a predestined feel-good finale (malice, racism and hardship are delicately kept at bay along the way, but if it is okay to subject Chantelle as an appendage of Mary-Alice’s white privilege when the film comes out, today, the optics are irrevocably diametrical), Sayles’ picture is prominent for Deakin's particular eye of the bayou environs, and Mason Daring’s aptly exotic score is a plus. Then, there are additional sparks from the peripheral characters, like Nancy Mette’s fantastic shadings in her “I didn’t ask for the anal probe” delivery, Sayles’ barbs shot at the soapy stardom and pursuing an acting career are both caustic and divertingly timeless.

referential entries: Bruce Beresford’s DRIVING MISS DAISY (1989, 8.1/10); John Sayles’ THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH (1994, 7.4/10); Julie Dash’s DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991, 7.1/10).

Title: Passion Fish

Year: 1992

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Drama

Director/Screenwriter/Editing: John Sayles

Music: Mason Daring

Cinematography: Roger Deakins

Cast:

Mary McDonnell

Alfred Woodard

Vondie Curtis-Hall

David Strathairn

Angela Bassett

Sheila Kelley

Nancy Mette

Leo Burmester

Tom Wright

Nora Dunn

Mary Portser

Maggie Renzi

Marianne Muellerleile

Rating: 7.2/10