''Passion Fish'' is a 1992 American
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film written and directed by
John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles (born September 28, 1950) is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for ''Passion Fish'' (1992) and ''L ...
. The film stars
Mary McDonnell
Mary Eileen McDonnell (born April 28, 1952) is an American film, stage, and television actress. She received Academy Award nominations for her roles as Stands With A Fist in ''Dances with Wolves'' and May-Alice Culhane in ''Passion Fish''. McD ...
,
Alfre Woodard
Alfre Woodard (; born November 8, 1952) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including four Primetime Emmy Awards (tying the record for the most acting Emmys won by an African-American performer, along with Regina King), ...
,
Vondie Curtis-Hall
Vondie Curtis-Hall is an American actor, screenwriter, film director, and television director. As an actor, he is known for his role as Dr. Dennis Hancock on the CBS medical drama '' Chicago Hope'' created by David E. Kelley and as Ben Urich in ...
,
David Strathairn
David Russell Strathairn (; born January 26, 1949) is an American actor. Known for his leading roles on stage and screen, he has often portrayed historical figures such as Edward R. Murrow, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William H. Seward, and John Dos ...
,
Leo Burmester
Bernard Leo Burmester (February 1, 1945 – June 28, 2007) was an American actor. Burmester worked for director John Sayles several times, including in ''Passion Fish'' (1992) and '' Lone Star'' (1996), and also for directors such as John Schl ...
, and
Angela Bassett
Angela Evelyn Bassett (born August 16, 1958) is an American actress. She had her breakthrough with her portrayal of singer Tina Turner in the biopic ''What's Love Got to Do with It'' (1993), which garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award ...
.
It tells the story of a
soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
star, paralyzed after being struck by a taxi, who is forced to return to her family home and rely upon a series of nurses, forcing each of them to leave her employment until one shows up guaranteed to stay.
Plot
May-Alice Culhane, a New York actress on a daytime
soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
, lies in a hospital bed, confused and scared because she is unable to sit up. She attempts to press the call button but ends up switching on the TV, which happens to be playing a scene from the soap featuring her.
Culhane has been left paralyzed after an accident on her way to getting her legs waxed. With no other options, she returns to her family's old and empty home in Louisiana, where she drinks hard, is dissatisfied with every caregiver, and wallows in self-pity.
Her outlook begins to change with the arrival of Chantelle, a nurse with her own problems. The two gradually find a heartfelt connection with each other, and as a result, their lives subtly change.
Cast
Production
Director
John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles (born September 28, 1950) is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for ''Passion Fish'' (1992) and ''L ...
said his inspiration for the story came from the film ''
Persona
A persona (plural personae or personas), depending on the context, is the public image of one's personality, the social role that one adopts, or simply a fictional Character (arts), character. The word derives from Latin, where it originally ref ...
'', as well as his own experiences working as a hospital
orderly
In healthcare, an orderly (also known as a ward assistant, nurse assistant or healthcare assistant) is a hospital attendant whose job consists of assisting medical and nursing staff with various nursing and medical interventions. The highest ro ...
.
In recovery for a back injury, Sayles was in the queue for X-rays and observed many of the wheelchair-using patients were women accompanied by their nurses. Sayles said, “A lot of them were really bored with each other and not especially nice to each other. And these are people who spend at least eight hours a day together — sometimes 24 — and they may have nothing in common. So I started thinking about that relationship."
Reception
Critical reception
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, it has an approval rating of 100% based on reviews from 25 critics.
Critics praised the film for its exploration of relationship dynamics, female friendship, and character detail.
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy is an American film critic and professor who has taught at Columbia University, New School for Social Research, Wellesley College, Arizona State University and UCLA Film School. Levy currently teaches in the department of cinem ...
noted, “Working again in the 'woman’s picture' domain, Sayles showed he could deal with material usually seen in 'TV Movie of the Week' in a mature, non-melodramatic way. Centering on female friendship, ''Passion Fish'' coincided with a cycle of studio films about female bonding, such as ''
Thelma and Louise
Thelma is a female given name. It was popularized by Victorian writer Marie Corelli who gave the name to the title character of her 1887 novel ''Thelma''. It may be related to a Greek word meaning "will, volition" see ''thelema''). Note that altho ...
'', ''
A League of Their Own
''A League of Their Own'' is a 1992 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Penny Marshall that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The film stars Tom Hanks, Geena Dav ...
'', and ''
Fried Green Tomatoes
''Fried Green Tomatoes'' is a 1991 American comedy-drama film directed by Jon Avnet and based on Fannie Flagg's 1987 novel ''Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe''. Written by Flagg and Carol Sobieski, and starring Kathy Bates, Jessic ...
''.”
Levy continued, "On the surface, the heroines play familiar types, but Sayles again shows his forte in etching deft characterizations, detailing the emotional transformation of each woman and the bond they establish once they get to know one another.”
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
gave ''Passion Fish'' four out of four stars and wrote, “There are elements here of a vaguely similar relationship in
Driving Miss Daisy
'' Driving Miss Daisy'' is a 1989 American comedy-drama film directed by Bruce Beresford and written by Alfred Uhry, based on his 1987 play of the same name. The film stars Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, and Dan Aykroyd. Freeman reprised his ...
'',' but Sayles has his own film, direct and original, and in the struggle of wills between these two characters he creates two of the most interesting human portraits of the year.”
Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' also lauded the film and observed Sayles "refuses to make his characters simple or stupid for the movies."
Praise for the acting was unanimous. Michael Wilmington of the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote, "It’s a critical cliche to talk about Oscar-worthy performances in the flood of year-end candidates, but Woodard and McDonnell deserve a look—from everybody. In the movie, the two show us a developing love and respect that is subterranean, almost unspoken, seeping up beneath a contentious surface. They have the easy, emotion-stretching mastery and limber spontaneity that marks the best screen acting."
Critic Malcolm Johnson of the ''
Hartford Courant
The ''Hartford Courant'' is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is considered to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven ...
'' also praised the cinematography and setting. He wrote, “as photographed by
Roger Deakins
Sir Roger Alexander Deakins (born 24 May 1949) is an English cinematographer, best known for his collaborations with directors the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve. Deakins has been admitted to both the British Society of Cinema ...
, Passion Fish''
' mirrors May-Alice's growing fascination with photographing the reclaimed world of her lost youth, a milieu
Mason Daring
Mason K. Daring (born September 21, 1949 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American musician and composer of scores for film and television. He has worked on nearly all the films directed by John Sayles, adapting his style to fit whatever peri ...
amplifies with
Cajun
The Cajuns (; French: ''les Cadjins'' or ''les Cadiens'' ), also known as Louisiana ''Acadians'' (French: ''les Acadiens''), are a Louisiana French ethnicity mainly found in the U.S. state of Louisiana.
While Cajuns are usually described as ...
music. But more than a voyage into the bayous, '
''Passion Fish''
' is a celebration of sisterhood and rebirth, movingly enacted by two of our finest actresses.”'
In November 2021, the film was featured as part of
The Criterion Channel
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cine ...
's series "Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women".
Box office
''Passion Fish'' received a limited release on December 9, 1992,
running for one week, the minimum required to make it eligible for consideration at the next year's Academy Awards.
The film earned $36,332 (14,385 of that in the weekend) in the week from showings in two theaters.
After receiving Academy Award nominations in February 1993, the film was released to 191 theaters, where it earned over 99% of its gross of $4.8 million.
Awards and nominations
References
External links
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{{John Sayles
1992 films
1992 comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
American independent films
Films directed by John Sayles
Films about paraplegics or quadriplegics
Films about alcoholism
Films about actors
Films about nurses
Films set in Louisiana
Films shot in Louisiana
Films scored by Mason Daring
Films with screenplays by John Sayles
1992 independent films
1990s female buddy films
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
Films about disability