director
Dan Ireland
screenwriters
Jim Jermanok
Steve Jermanok
producer
David Bakalar
cinematographer
Claudio Rocha
music
Harry Gregson-Williams
editor
Luis Colina
cast
Jason Isaacs (Charles Beck)
Sofia Milos (Celia Amonte)
Emmy Rossum (Vicky Amonte)
Theresa Russell (Lois Vargas)
Seymour Cassel (Daniel Vargas)
Lupe Ontiveros (Angelica Amonte)
Chris Tardio (Gianni)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 108m
u.s.
release: August 15,
2003
video
availability: TBA
official
website
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Celia Amonte (Sofia Milos),
the part-time fadista in the new romance Passionada,
stands in front of a clunky old microphone in a seafood restaurant
and pours out her mourning in song. Her husband, a New Bedford
fisherman, was lost at sea eight years ago, and she still pines
for him. Though we don't really sense anything special between
them in flashbacks aside from the usual clichéd frisking
about on the beach, we believe in the full-bodied intensity of
emotion in her voice (actually the voice of renowned fadista
Mísia). Fado music, a sort of Portuguese version
of blues music, speaks of unquenchable longing, a fate of resigned
sorrow. The sound of it puts the rest of this rather thin movie
to shame.
Is this an independent film?
The distinction becomes less clear every year. Last summer's
My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the indie success of the new
century, was at heart so comforting that no one was very surprised
when it became a sitcom. Passionada, perhaps being groomed
as this year's Greek Wedding, could be the pilot episode
for a TV comedy-drama about Celia, her spunky motorcycle-riding
daughter Vicky (Emmy Rossum), her sage old mother-in-law (Lupe
Ontiveros), and the dubious love of Celia's life, card-counter
Charles Beck (Jason Isaacs), who falls hard for Celia's singing
and passes himself off as a rich fish-processing magnate to woo
her.
Jason Isaacs, a last-minute
replacement for another actor, is obviously relieved to cast
off his usual skunky roles (The
Patriot, the upcoming Peter Pan) and test
the uncharted waters of a romantic lead. He's quite winning when
babbling charming nonsense to Celia, who seems to regard Charles
with disdain. I don't know whether Sofia Milos is built for romance,
though -- at least not with the material she has to work with
here (by screenwriter brothers Jim and Steve Jermanok). Mostly
she exudes an imperious sense of proud inaccessibility bordering
on arrogance: Impatiently, we may urge her to stop clinging to
her dead husband's bones and crack a smile every so often. Unfortunately,
the script, by way of matchmaker Vicky and the wise mother-in-law,
tells her that, too. Passionada becomes yet another seize-the-day
odd-couple fable.
The movie was filmed in and
around the heavily Portuguese city of New Bedford, and cinematographer
Claudio Rocha brings out the rich hues of dusk and the lurid
colors of the Feast, but the milieu feels generically "ethnic"
and only marginally Portuguese. The most intriguing characters
in the film, of whom we learn almost nothing, are Charles' rich
friends with a shady past of scamming, played by Seymour Cassel
and Theresa Russell (both in superb form). When Celia sees Charles
in a car with the Russell character, she assumes the worst and
dumps him, and Russell goes to Celia to talk things out; it's
typical of the movie that there's a fade-out and we don't hear
what's said between the two.
Passionada originally ended with Charles getting
his butt flattened by some Russian thugs (in connection with
his gambling, I guess) and going into a coma while Celia frets
over the possibility of yet another lost love. The ending was
radically reworked into the cutesy, happy denouement we get now,
which throws off the story's structure (why the ominous scene
of Charles getting nailed at a casino for card-counting -- which
sets us up to expect that it'll be his eventual downfall -- if
there's now no follow-through?) and goes against the soul of
fado. This once might have been a bluesy, bitter movie
about love's ephemeral pains and bliss. What it is now is a by-the-numbers
opposites-attract romance in which every dramatic beat and life
lesson comes on schedule. As for passion, Tobey Maguire showed
more of it towards Seabiscuit.
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