Word: swamp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...dies in an auto accident decreed by the author to get everyone's moping started, wonders fretfully whether he is obliged to attend her funeral. Other people behave shabbily, all of them, like Lottie, largely humorless and utterly self-absorbed. An occasional good line briefly clears the prevailing swamp gas, as when Lottie sums things up for her brother's lover's complaining husband: "She left you. You chased her. On the , great seesaw of love, she's up and you're down...
...City. "It just drained me. Interview and shoot. Interview and shoot. Interview and shoot," he says, looking dazed at the memory. He heard reporters making bets that he'd miss his big shot. "They kept saying, 'If you win this million dollars, are you gonna move out of that swamp?' " he recalls, making fun of his own accent with an exaggerated drawl...
...northern sections of the swamp are already dry. Most of the rice farming population has left. In the central marshes, the Shi'ite stronghold, the water level has dropped as much as 18 ft. Inhabitants now have to dig wells to find drinking water; in one attempt, villagers struck oil instead...
Leroy built the stairs. But even this dogged optimist, who says he is "only a dumb swamp Yankee," can see that his wife's "eyes are full of disappointment." Yes, in him -- a reproach tempered by Patricia's realization that he has stayed, through 20 years of her illness, because he remembers her as she was and could be again. Now he wants her to live for something more than gratitude: "You just have to love this world...
...short-story writer he is, Sayles enjoys listening to people, picking up their quirks and cadences. These characters don't barge into Passion Fish, they just drop by. And they are worth the visit. The movie squirms to life when the subsidiary folk appear: Rennie (David Strathairn), the engaging "swamp Cajun" with the motor boat; Chantelle's beau Sugar (Vondie Curtis-Hall), whose pleasure in women is a contagious delight; Kim (Sheila Kelley) and Nina (Nancy Mette), two soap-opera actresses who give zest and drama to any line reading; May-Alice's gay, weary old friend Reeves (Leo Burmester...