Passionada (2003)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Fresh and Exciting

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's been seven years since Celia Amonte (Sofia Milos) lost her fisherman husband Joseph at sea. She's a Portuguese immigrant in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She and her daughter Vicky (Emmy Rossum) live with her mother-in-law Angelica Amonte (Lupe Ontiveros). Vicky goes out to the casino and encounters professional gambler Charles Beck (Jason Isaacs). He has been brought in by the respectable Vargases (Theresa Russell, Seymour Cassel). Vicky wants to join him as a gambling team. He falls for Celia who is singing in a dinner club. With Vicky's help, he pretends to be a fisherman to woo Celia while he teaches her to count cards.For symmetry, Vicky needs a young guy to play with. Emmy Rossum was around 15 but she looked 20ish especially dolled up to get into the casino. Rossum has more presence than Milos. This leads to the uncomfortable prospects of pairing her up with Charles. To concentrate on the budding romance with Celia, Charles needs more screen time with her and less with Vicky. The central romance is lacking real heat. This has more in common with an average Lifetime romance except this is supposed to be better. There is a Portuguese aspect to the characters which is not fully exploited. There is food but the movie fails in making food porn. It feels superficial like an ethnic food fair festival. There are ways to make more out of the situation but the movie fails to excel.

Emmy is #2 in my pantheon, thanks to Minnie Driver and her appearance in "the Phantom of the Opera". For me, Emmy is the best young actress but she is also the most underrated: Jessica got praises, smiles for magazines only and does stinker after stinker. Natalie wins awards. And Emmy is just empty-handed, albeit she is cool with everybody and has true talent! Here, she is only sixteen and she plays a wonderful witty daughter! If the movie is the classic (unsurprising) romance with the love/hate/love/hate stages, it has some original sparks as well: the Portuguese culture, a modest unknown town, and a solid cast that put on the spotlight people usually cast to guest-star! So it's rather enjoyable, and more when Emmy appears. And if you really want to have fun, look for the alternative ending which was indeed totally disastrous!

Charlie (Jason Isaac) is a card player of dubious luck, who lives in a cheap motel and is going nowhere until he meets and woos a conservative and beautiful Portugese seamstress/singer, Celia, played by the stunning Sofia Milos (CSI: Miami). Celia has a meddlesome teenage daughter, Vickie (Emmy Rossum) who wants to learn how to count cards by blackmailing Charlie into teaching her, but he is banned from all casinos. Vickie wants to hook her mother up with a new man but her computer dating schemes fail. In the meanwhile, Charlie's only friends, a wealthy couple, Lois (Theresa Russell) and Danny Vargas (Seymore Cassel), lend him their Jaguar XKE, sailboat, and home to impress the widow that he is a successful and wealthy entrepreneur. It sounds like a typical dating game setup except for the background settings of the Portugese fishing community, mouthwatering seafood cooking, and casino gaming that flesh out the story. Love, fish, and lying to make points with the mother, Charlie learns how to turn his life around the hard way through his deceptions which backfire, and Sofia tries to forget the husband whose death has left her prematurely widowed yet not dead from the neck down. Through the interferences of Vickie, lots of fish as unlikely props, and a sappy storyline, this is an entertaining film which allows the wonderful character actor Jason Isaac to show another side to his already powerful acting chops. Emmy Rossum is adequately irritating in a pre-Phantom of the Opera role which suggests her growth from typical teen to ingénue in training. However, it is the vibrant Sofia Milos as Celia who gives a rounded performance from cloistered widow to sensuous nightclub chanteuse that surprises and delights.This is a small story about love in all its forms and definitions. Thoroughly enjoyable and wonderful for a date nite or simply rainy day, Passionada entertains.

Independent film making is to be commended because it brings a different view about things that are so over blown by mainstream Hollywood fare. That said, it's completely incomprehensible the negative comments generated by "Passionada". This film, directed with style by Dan Ireland, deserves better than what has been written in IMDb.Most of the venom directed to "Passionada" seems to be about its authenticity and the ethnicity of the characters being misrepresented by the cast assembled. Those complaints are baseless. Do the same people that put it down have anything to say when they watch other mainstream films that have no logic at all? I don't think so. Lighten up, people it's only a film that aims at entertaining its viewers."Passionada" is a small film about loss and redemption told in cinematic terms by a cast that plays well together. Jason Isaacs, the card sharpie Charles Beck, finds love with the dark and sultry Celia Amonte, played by Sofia Milos. Their love grows in spite of all what Charles hides from his past.Lupe Ontiveros, an excellent actress, doesn't have much to do in the film, but then it's not her story we are watching. Emmy Rossum is the rebel daughter. Seymour Cassel and Theresa Russell are fine in their small roles.The town of New Bedford, Massachussets, serves as the perfect background for this romantic comedy.