We head south instead, to Cajun country, where the New York actress grew up. Her career cut short, she withdraws to the funky, abandoned family manse in Louisiana to drink, curse and abuse a series of nurses, none of whom can cope with May-Alice’s belligerence. But Chantelle (Alfre Woodard) sticks around. She knows how to hold her own, though her eyes, which can look as startled as a deer’s caught in headlights, suggest she’s not a pillar of strength herself. Indeed, as Chantelle’s story gradually emerges, we discover she’s also a woman in recovery.
Working in the private, female mode of “Lianna” and “Baby, It’s You” rather than in the public, male perspective of “City of Hope” and “Matewan,” Sayles has written two remarkable women’s roles. McDonnell and Woodard respond superbly. Sayles’s women are a special breed. There’s an ethical code in “Passion Fish” that’s usually associated with macho buddy movies: the good gals keep their lips zipped, they don’t spill their guts to strangers, don’t indulge in the touchy-feely sentiments that one might expect from the genre. There aren’t any villains in the movie, but there are a few comic fools, all of whom run on at the mouth, like Precious and Ti-Marie, May-Alice’s cotton-brained childhood friends (in the weakest scene in the movie), or the three actress pals who come calling from New York (a hilarious scene that features Nancy Mette’s off-the-wall soliloquy about how to say the line “I didn’t ask for the anal probe” in a B movie). Sayles, the most writerly of moviemakers, takes the measure of his men and women by the words they use-and the silences they keep.
A leisurely, intimate, often sharply funny film, “Passion Fish” has an expansiveness that belies its narrow focus. Evocatively shot by Roger Deakins, it lets us soak up the humid, laid-back Louisiana landscapes, which play a palpable role in the two women’s transformations. And Sayles keeps opening up the drama with fresh characters-Sugar (Vondie Curtis-Hall), a zydeco-playing blacksmith who courts the jumpy Chantelle, and especially David Strathairn’s Rennie, the Cajun bad boy May-Alice admired as a teenager, now a subdued handyman hemmed in by a fundamentalist wife. This splendidly acted film takes us to places both expected and unexpected. The soap-opera framework remains, but the suds have been replaced with smarts, and the emotions ring true.
