Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1992

The Contenders:

The Crying Game (winner)
Husbands and Wives
Lorenzo’s Oil
Passion Fish
Unforgiven

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1992

The Contenders:

Emma Thompson: Howards End (winner)
Catherine Deneuve: Indochine
Susan Sarandon: Lorenzo’s Oil
Michelle Pfeiffer: Love Field
Mary McDonnell: Passion Fish

Born on the Bayou

Films: Passion Fish
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

There are plenty of movies on my Oscars lists that I watch specifically because they are on the lists. I wouldn’t normally watch something like Passion Fish, which screams “women’s movie” from the cover to the cast to the description. The cast is good, though. I like Mary McDonnell well enough, and I love Alfre Woodard, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and David Strathairn. I went into this with some reservations, but also with the hope that I’d like it.

Passion Fish starts with an inciting incident that we don’t see. Soap opera actress May-Alice Culhane is struck by a car while getting out of a taxi and is paralyzed. After gritting her way through some physical therapy and with nowhere else to go, she returns to her family home in bayou country in Louisiana. Angry and bitter, May-Alice begins drinking heavily and entertaining herself more or less by driving away all of her nurses.