Almost There: Alfre Woodard in "Passion Fish"
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 7:02PM 
Alfre Woodard is one of the great American actresses of our time. If there were any doubts about that, last year's Clemency must have surely killed them for good. Still, for people obsessed with movie awards, Woodard's mastery might not be obvious. Her sole Academy Award nomination came in 1983 for a film that few remember, Cross Creek. The lack of recognition for that feature doesn't mean it doesn't deserve praise and it certainly doesn't reflect lackluster acting. But we're here to talk about a different performance.
The 1992 drama Passion Fish was up for Actress and Screenplay and it's easy to imagine that a third nomination for Woodard nearly materialized...
Directed and written by John Sayles, the film tells the story of two women stuck together by life's unexpected tragedies. The first one we meet is May-Alice Culhane, a soap opera star who's been involved in a violent car accident. In the aftermath, she lost mobility and feeling of the lower half of her body and has decided to get herself drunk on equal doses of self-pity and booze. Reluctant to hear her doctor's advice, she even goes back to her home state of Louisiana. Unemployed and desperately lonely, the actress wallows away in front of the TV, antagonizing her nurses in a cruel game of deliberate abrasiveness. That is until Chantelle arrives at her place.
She's May-Alice's new nurse and, for the first time, the wheelchair-bound thespian of day-time television seems to have found someone as stubborn as her. Cagey and resilient, the nurse slowly cracks the façade of prickly self-hatred worn by the other woman and the two learn to live together, one miserable step at a time. Passion Fish is made of two interlacing character studies, using the contrasts between the two women as well as startling similarities to investigate their inner lives, the way they are haunted by the past and prefer to either ignore or surrender to the challenges life puts in front of them. It's a tale of two women, two addicts, two complicated personalities that are never sugarcoated by the script or the actresses who play them.
In the role of the paraplegic actress, Mary McDonnel has the showier part, but that doesn't mean Alfre Woodard's Chantelle is short-changed. As the film goes along, it becomes more focused on the plight of the caregiver than the melodrama of her patient. Part of that comes from the way John Sayles' camera is positively besotted by Alfre Woodard's expressive countenance, staging entire scenes that hinge on the most minute movements of her face. Since Chantelle is a stubborn woman who insists on keeping things to herself, barely revealing anything about her life unless she's forced to, our awareness of her psychology depends heavily on the emotional information Woodard can wordlessly telegraph.
Thankfully, filling silences with a novel's worth of bruised feeling and challenging emotions is this actress's specialty. We can see that throughout her career, injecting a heartbreaking sense of tragedy into Tyler Perry movies, adding astringent complexity to Spike Lee's Crooklyn, making Clemency's last scenes into something out of a passion play directed by Dreyer. In Passion Fish, she isn't asked to go that far, but the modesty of these dramatic heights never stop Woodard from doing her best. Scenes of reluctant seduction, for example, could be an atonal bit of sexy comic relief. However, she makes them into little spectacles of intimacy and joy bursting through the concrete floor of Chantelle's stoic attitude.
Other great acting showcases are the final scenes of Passion Fish when Woodard is finally given some melodrama to bite into and delivers beautifully. Chantelle's past comes back to haunt her with sadness and guilt. Her drug addiction problems come to light and a daughter that now lives with her grandfather spends the summer with her mother. By the water, talking to her kid, Chantelle allows herself a moment of vulnerability and Woodard plays the scene with as much intensity as contention. She cries, she tenses up and she melts, she gives the audience a summary of the trials and tribulations of an estranged mother with just a handful of poignant stares and wavering line deliveries. Later, on a boat with May-Alice and contemplating the future, Woodard's even better.
It's not all made up of powerful silences, of course. Hell, Woodard even has a shouting scene in the middle of the film, when Chantelle has had enough of May-Alice's bitchiness after a day of self-imposed sobriety. That could have been her Oscar clip, but the Academy chose to ignore Woodard as they are prone to do. Curiously, despite getting less precursor attention McDonnell managed to get into the Best Actress lineup. Maybe the cause of such a snub was the unshowy nature of the part, maybe it was category confusion (despite winning the Spirit award for Best Supporting Actress, Woodard is a borderline lead), maybe it was too much competition.
Whatever the reason, Alfre Woodard should have more than a single Oscar nomination and it's a tragedy that she's stuck at one.
Reader Comments (32)
I wonder if Tomei had won if Woodward had made it into the nominations. I think two Americans would have propelled Miranda Richardson to the win.
Alfre Woodard is a gifted actress. Her success primarily lies in television where she has received ample accolades of 16 Emmy nominations (four wins). While exceptions occurred, I think it was more difficult in the last century for actors well known for television to achieve recognition in motion pictures.
for Damage? I wish because she's my favourite but I just don't see it. Tomei won because they just didn't want to vote for Redgrave or Davis.
I still can't believe what happened to Alfre THIS season. At least Mary Kay had the love of two major film critics.
Not really a fan of the film or performance but, as a past nominee and with McDonnell in there, I actually am surprised she didn't make the cut.
She's always almost there yet she definitely has had the performances.
This one hurts. Her and Tomei were the best followed by Redgrave then Davis. Mary McDonnell giving the gays the perfect divalicious bitter queen with heart and vulnerability deserved the win. Thompson is great (Slightly better than a lot of her praised sleepwalking roles), but none glowed with the passion(fish) and wryness as McDonnell. (Plus the film is underrated as heck.)
Love this film and this performance. No matter the medium or the genre— TV, film, prestige projects, indies, sci-fi— Alfre Woodard always brings the full force of her talent and her intellect to the role.
@James
Alfre Woodard has more traction with the TV academy but she's no TV actress. Her celebrity still has roots in film.
To the author she only starred in one Tyler Perry movie, The Family That Preys, with Kathy Bates as her screen partner. Good work from both of them and the only time in his filmography where the movie doesn't solely feel like himself at his most pedestrian.
I wholly blame the snub on the male voter bloc thinking with their crotch for Tomei. She is literally the only one in the category where one goes one of these things aren't like the other.
/3rtful -- Sorry if my wording made it sound like she had starred in more Perry films. I love her work in The Family That Preys and would have nominated her for Best Supporting Actress in 2006. Her reaction to her best friend's fate is an amazing bit of acting that's stayed in my mind ever since I watched it. I do hope she stars in more of his movies though. If nothing else because she seems able to inject actual humanity into his trademark melodramas.
As always, thank you all for the feedback.
Alfre Woodard was totally considered a TV actress back in the 90s when doing TV was also considered the worst.
She's great here. Her snub, in a film the academy clearly saw and liked, is likely due to voters in the 1990s overlooking Black actors. If this were almost any former nominee they would have made it in. However, I'm glad she's still working and hope one day soon she'll get a second nomination.
Peggy Sue - ideally for The Crying Game. But a couple of years ago I used my archive credentials to go back and look at all the newspapers at the time (also the Charlie Rose predictions show incidentally).
90 per cent of pundits were predicting Richardson to win the Oscar. It seems in the years since the online commentary has turned it into more of a contest with Davis and Redgrave factoring more highly than they did at the time.
great highlight of a great performance. woodard and mcdonnell are perfection in this movie, and the film itself is a beauty. i miss john sayles, he made a bunch of wonderful movies over several decades, and this was one of his very best.
She is great in the film but its such a two hander that even though Mary McDonnell is the nominal lead it might have felt to the Academy, at least the Academy of the time before they started doing category fraud as a matter of form, that she was a co-lead and therefore she missed out on Supporting.
In a way it's good that they didn't give her a false placing because she really is a lead but I'm always up for more recognition of the fabulously talented Alfre.
She's solid but not a big snub.
I remember this film though I don't think I saw it in its entirety considering that it's John Sayles who is a premier American indie filmmaker.
@markgordonuk
She was a Globe nominee and a Spirit Award winner for Passion Fish. She was a major snub. Especially when it would have been a sophomore nod alongside McDonald's sophomore nod.
Luke, I totally remember the Charlie Rose predictions show where Miranda Richardson was predicted to win Best Supporting Actress for 'Damage' (and also in recognition of an overall excellent year). I wouldn't be surprised if she was a close second to Tomei that year.
I fell in love with her in the otherwise completely forgettable Miss Firecracker (a VHS i picked out at random from my local store in the mid-90s). She always injects so much depth and specificity and human detail into every character.
For me she was even best in show in 12 Years a Slave (I would so love to see *that* movie - where her character is the protagonist).
I finally caught Clemency just this weekend and she didn't disappoint. (Woodard, Nyong'o and Zellweger were just in a separate league to all other actresses this year)
In fact the film in general was actually quite solid and a lot more sophisticated and engaging than I expected. Chukwu seems very talented, I'm surprised she didn't get more coverage
Actually it would be a dream if she and Woodard got to make another movie together with a bigger budget and profile.
May-Alice: Did they tell you I was a bitch?
Chantelle: On wheels.
I like the subtle dig Chantelle makes to May-Alice. It is acknowledging a (bad) reputation that seems to come from a place of self-pity and boastfulness, only to have Chantelle remind her of her immobility without sounding condescending. Oh Alfré!
I generally love John Sayles. He can be really brilliant (The Secret of Roan Inish, Men With Guns, Lone Star) or terrible (Amigo).
/3rtful lacks taste if he's coming for Tomei. Comedy performances done that well should be rewarded and were in the mood of the 90's Academy. But yes Woodard would have made fine competition. Richardson too short and stunned a passionate few, Davis great but hideously ovverated for years, Redgrave great in a Julia sized role, and some other person I won't bother to look up right now. Maybe a few votes considering her a co-lead lead her to miss? Or more likely what Joe G. said above.
Very interesting comment from Luke that shines a different light on the narrative around this race and how it has been relayed in the years since.
Vigo - she was my favorite part of 12 Years A Slave as well! And McDonnell and Woodard have worked on many projects together but not in so long, am glad to know I am not alone in dreaming of them reuniting for a project!!
Charlie Rose can say whatever the fuck he wants but I was the expected winner.
my take on this race is always that it was one of those years where they really couldn't make up their minds (like 2007). Those years are so rare and so wonderful and the winner sometimes ends up being a delight! Love Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. I remember a lot of Richardson enthusiasm at the time (for her overall year) but I was always under the impression that it was Davis who was the also ran (Redgrave was literally never going to win... not sure what people are on to rewrite history in that way)
but yes. category fraud wasn't as accepted and expected then and Passion Fish is quite a two-hander.
Charlton Heston went public with his hesitation to vote for Redgrave despite loving her work in Howards End over concerns she would be just as politically outspoken in her acceptance speech as she was the first time.
Judy Davis played a ball buster and the predominate male voter bloc typically denies our best actresses over venomous characters.
Plowright and Richardson didn't motivate consensus passion. Tomei's sex appeal played a role in her getting the role, being singled out for the role, and winning for the role.
@Nathaniel -- for nonwhite performers category fraud was definitely more acceptable to the voter body. They simply didn't want her to tilt a win for garnering a sophomore nod.
also on a related note: this film is wonderful. so if you've never seen it give it a spin.
I love Miranda's kitchen scene and she totally gets my vote but if they couldn't handle Shame in 2011 I just don't see the bulk of the Academy embracing the fucks in Damage in 1992.
Interesting how despite the Golden Globe win Joan Plowright couldn't benefit from the stage legend status that Dench had in 98.
Dench's win was seen as a makeup for losing Best Actress the previous year.
@Peggy Sue
Category confusion lead to her missing out on a BSA nomination. Remember BA was incredibly week in 1992 so I assume some voters elevated her to Lead(where she actually belonged.)
Not your best “famous commenter” attempt with Judy Davis, Peggy Sue.
It's good to read something about Alfre Wodard but for me the Almost There of 1992 regarding actresses was Sharon Stone in BASIC INSTINCT, even if many won't agree or won't care. I remember that back then I had the feeling that Judy Davis was a very strong contender (but probably it's just because it was my fav among the nominees) and possibly the frontrunner...
Michael -- it's so true. 1992 was a very empty year in terms of legit contenders which is surely how MICHELLE PFEIFFER ended up there despite a movie that was barely released that no one particularly liked. Of course it helped that she was also Oscar worthy in Batman Returns the same year. There was so little competition i'm sure all leads got some votes. even Mia Farrow in Husbands and Wives (though at the time the scandal about the breakup and the accusastions against woody and against Mia were just breaking). I even wondered for a hot second if Geena Davis had a shot for A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN.
I tink I'm in the minority, but metink Tomei took Woodard's spot in nom, & Judy Davis' spot in the winner