"Passion Fish"
                           A Review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                        February 27, 1993

   For feminist film lovers John Sayles's new offering "Passion
Fish" is a "must see" film.   Sayles is among the very best U.S.
independent filmmakers and though many of his films are about men
and their struggles (for example "Mattewan," "Eight Men Out," and
"City of Hope") when turns his attention to writing films about
women such as  "Lianna" and now "Passion Fish," the characters are
drawn with such understanding, respect, and compassion that I have
to call Sayles a feminist filmmaker.

   Sayles wrote, directed and edited "Passion Fish" while his wife
and longtime collaborator Maggie Renzi was co-producer and acts in
the film.  It has received two well deserved Academy Award
nominations--best original screenplay and best actress for Mary
McDonnell's performance as May-Alice--and I'll be rooting for it to
win them both.

   The film is a portrait of two women, May-Alice and Chantelle,
each of whom has an urgent need for what the other can offer her at
that particular point in her life.  May-Alice is a New York actress
with a role on a long-running soap opera (which she disparagingly
refers to as "The Young and the Stupid") but as the film opens she
has been hit by a taxi and rendered a parapelegic.  She goes to the
empty family home in the Louisiana bayou country where, as she says
in a message she puts on her answering machine, she has crawled
into a hole to die.  All that the bitter May-Alice really wants to
do is sit and drink, watch television, and feel sorry for herself.
A series of nurses sent by an agency either quit or are fired
before Chantelle (played by Alfre Woodard) arrives from Chicago
with, as we discover, an urgent need to succeed in this job of
caring for May-Alice.  The battle of wills begins, for though May-
Alice is "a bitch on wheels" Chantelle is determined not only to
stick it out in this isolated and foreign place, but to do the job
she was hired to do, namely give May-Alice the care she needs,
whether she wants it or not.  This entails finding ways to make her
exercise and build upper-body strength and getting her to
acknowledge and deal with her alcoholism.  The power struggle
between the white woman employer who wields the financial power and
the Black woman employee who is able-bodied and has the power to
dictate nearly every detail of the other woman's life is utterly
compelling dramatic material.  The gradual shifting of the
relationship between the two women toward something that in the end
approximates friendship is the most interesting aspect of the
screenplay.

   As various vistors from May-Alice's and Chantelle's past lives
wend their way to this isolated house, we find out more about who
these women are and the worlds from which they have come.  These
visits are sometimes hilarious, especially the ones from May-
Alice's Southern belle childhood friends and from some of her soap-
opera colleagues.  Sayles includes a long monologue by one of these
actresses about filming a one-line part that had me, a former
actress, in stitches.   A visit from May-Alice's gay Uncle Max is
a turning point in two ways: we see for the first time that May-
Alice does have the capacity for affection for another person and
he leaves her with a camera which encourages her finally to begin
to look outward and think about something other than her own
misfortune.

   Chantelle's visitors are less amusing; her former drug-dealing
boyfriend from Chicago who has the decency to leave before she sees
him once he's convinced that she's doing all right, and her stern,
judgmental father who brings her little daughter to visit.

    May-Alice's interest in living is heightened by her becoming
reacquainted with Rennie (David Strathern) a Cajun whom she had a
crush on during high school and who now works as a handyman and
tour guide to support his family of five and his religious zealot
of a wife.  Chantelle, the city girl, is not so taken at first with
the Louisiana blacksmith "Sugar" LeDouce (played by Vondie Curtis-
Hall) but eventually comes to appreciate his joie de vivre, his
lovemaking, and his kindness.

    This is a film that doesn't neatly resolve all the loose ends
in the final reel.  Like the soap operas May-Alice spent so many
years working in, and like life, this story is open-ended and
ongoing.  But the place at which we leave May-Alice and Chantelle
is at least one in which the possibilities open to both of them are
considerably better than those they faced when we first encountered
them and we leave the theater hoping and believing that things will
work out well for them as they continue to be "stuck with one
another" at least for a while longer.

    Oh yes, you will find out about two-thirds of the way through
the film why it's called "Passion Fish."

   For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women
and Film.