Product Description

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/27/2008 Run time: 135 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34562 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 1999-03-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 135 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
An intelligent and potent drama about taking life's second chances when they come, Passion Fish finds director John Sayles (Matewan, Lone Star) once again providing a strong cast of actors with a smart, literate screenplay to produce an entertaining and thought-provoking film. Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves, Grand Canyon) plays a soap-opera actress paralyzed in a car accident, who returns to the small town on the Louisiana bayou where she grew up to hide. But the hiring of a physical therapist with a tortured past (Alfre Woodard), and the sometimes antagonistic bond formed between them, allows the woman to try and rehabilitate herself and seize the opportunities that life still has to offer. With some great tradi\ tional Cajun music and the picturesque bayou as a backdrop, Passion Fish is an engaging yarn not to be missed. --Robert Lane

Customer Reviews

Flawed beauty
This is a beautifully filmed, splendidly acted, and intelligently written film, well worth watching. At the same time, the movie is overly long and the script contains more than a bit of soap opera. Most objectionable, to this viewer, was the low level of moral sensitivity exhibited by Sayles. There seems to be nothing higher in life than sex, even when it's with someone else's husband. Christianity is sneered at in the script, and there is blasphemy along with the much-used "f" word. At the end, one has the feeling that the two women lead characters will reach no higher goal in life than jumping in the sack with assorted men. Just the message this society needs!

Sayles Bait
I love John Sayles's movies--and he's an excellent short story writer, too. I hadn't gotten around to watching PASSION FISH, though, until very recently. It's everything I'd come to expect in a Sayles film: compelling dialogue, fascinating characters (all of them, even the bit-players who were only in one or two scenes), great soundtrack, smart casting, and wise, subtle humor.

The story is basically about two guarded, emotionally damaged women who find strength in each other as their friendship evolves.

However, there were a few little errors that irritated me, particularly since I had it on good authority that Sayles's understanding of rural Louisiana was dead-on. Apparently Sayles hadn't hired any Chicago fact-checkers, although one major, and a few minor, characters were from Chicago.

The sticking points were:

1. Two characters are discussing their Chicago origins and mention the high schools they attended. The Angela Bassett character says she graduated from Cooley High. Unfortunately, there's no such place. Maybe Sayles was giving a nod to the iconic movie of the same name, so we'll let him pass on this one.

2. The other character, Chantelle, supposedly graduated from DuSable High. At one point there was, indeed, a high school with that name. But she calls it "Du SAY ble High", while any Chicagoan would know the pronunciation is "Du SAH ble." This is as bad as if Sayles had a Kentuckian refer to LouISSville. Sheesh.

3. A passing reference is made to a "joke" about Chicago having been burned, in relation to the race riots of the late 1960's. Sayles has evidently never visited the West Side, which, 40 years later, still hasn't recovered from the initial arson fest and the subsequent abandonment and decay of that part of Chicago. Despite the occasional stab at gentrification, the area remains impoverished and desolate. That's no joke to the people who are still stuck there.

I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a good character-driven tale--and I recommend "The Encyclopedia of Chicago" to Sayles's production team, just in case.

PASSION FISH
THis is a movie rich. The acting is superb. No action but pleny of really good story. I have watched Passion Fish many times both in VHS and now in DVD. It never grows old.