"The Cajuns have always squeezed the passion fish, some swallow the passion fish, thinking hard of the one they want to be liked off." The successful soap star May-Alice Culhane is after a taxi accident a paraplegic, bound to her wheelchair. She returns to her childhood home in Louisiana. To cope with the sudden chock of the totally new situation (like this starts the movie, May-Alice not understanding where she is and what happened. Finally at home in her childhoods home she starts drinking and watching television as the only thing to do. For the ever changing help she is the unbearable 'bitch on wheels'. Until Chantelle enters the scene. We know all about the bitter, white mistress. What she was, what happened to her and how it is now for her. But Chantelle? Parts and bits of the black recovering cocaine addicts background emerges slowly in bits and pieces. When Lucas shows up. When her father with her daughter pays a visit. Her father is the legal guardian for her daughter: "as long I think it is necessary" he tells Chantelle, his daughter. The white mistress and her black servant seem to be far apart: white and black. Two different worlds. But not: they sit in the same boat (shown metaphoric when the movie ends. Chantelle: "We are stuck with each other" and answered by May-Alice: "For the time being." May-Alice is visited twice by her former work, hardly hiding their pity for May-Alice and her black servant. When nothing is left to hide behind the white bitterness and the black stubbornness the afford to pretend is with no meaning. The possibility emerges: not to recognize but to see the other. Each other. Both in need of help. Helping each other. With no-way-out-option. Instead pity: respect. They are assisted by Rennie, the childhood crush, the Cajun handyman (Chantelle mouthes silent to her: "He likes you." And Sugar LeDoux, the local cowboy with children around every corner. He seduces Chantelle with smiling charm and dances with her daughter at the local festivity. Watched by the critical eyes of Chantelles father. Does the cowboy want Chantelles heart he must behave. The womens forced-up respect transforms to friendship. Behind their private disaster as crippled successful soap star and the recovering cocaine addict eds last chance for a job. This job. Both on their way to accept again life. Mirroring each others needs. Both crippled: a white body and a black soul.

"Passion Fish", directed and written by John Sayles, is a sturdy very good watch on the whole. I thought there was obviously a lot of thought that had gone into the lead characters plights and what each were struggling through. However, sometimes knit-picking isn't too fun but must be done, and there were 2 different things that brought the movie down from great to good. One was about a 5 minute diatribe that a side-character blathers about "anal-probes". My wife and I were sitting there watching and both looked at each other saying "wth was that", the editor completely asleep at the wheel. And secondly, the ending sort of fizzled. Correct these 2 inconsistencies, and I think the movie was an 8/10. Great job by leads McDownell and Woodard nonetheless, especially McDownell.

A crippled TV soap opera star (Mary McDonnell) retreats, with undisguised bitterness, to her neglected childhood home in Louisiana, where she proceeds to make life hell for a series of nurses, until the arrival of Alfre Woodard. The balance of the movie follows McDonnell's slow emotional recovery and her reluctant friendship with Woodard, but despite the similarity to so many other Hollywood rehab dramas there isn't a wasted word or image, and not a cliché in sight. The film marks a return to the intimate scale of director John Sayles' earlier efforts, and it's a pleasure to finally see a mainstream American movie with the novelty of real characters speaking believable dialogue, written by a filmmaker with enough patience to allow his story to develop at a natural pace. The result is a leisurely but powerful drama, with more than its share of humor and with plenty of lively local Cajun culture. Trivia note: both McDonnell and Woodard were previously featured in Lawrence Kasdan's Yuppie wish-fulfillment fantasy 'The Grand Canyon' where, ironically, they never shared a single scene.

This film could have been made in Hollywood with a similar cast and similar setting, and it would have been awful.But in the hand's of Sayles it's another gem. All his usual characteristics are there in a slow, well-written story. Not overly sentimental, despite the feel-good ending. This is good stuff.