Writer/director John Sayles introduces us to May-Alice (Mary McDonnell), a bitchy star of a daytime soap who wakes up confused and lost in a hospital bed. She is informed that she has a spinal injury that has rendered her a paraplegic, and will never walk again. She doesn't deal with it very well, but who would? At first she refuses to do her rehabilitation exercises, frustrating and angering her doctors with her gallows humor and seeming lack of care for herself.

Mary McDonnell, in an Oscar-nominated performance, has a delicate job to do that she pulls off admirably. She has to present us with this angry, hateful woman who has gone through something that most of us will never experience. Audience sympathy is a fragile thing, and viewers quickly start to dislike someone who is so negative despite what she went through. There is the tendency to say, "Why doesn't she just get on with her life?" which isn't very nice but is all too typical. McDonnell gives us a character whose biting comments and childish antics (like throwing food at the wall when she doesn't want to eat) are seen as a cover for the deep anguish she feels. It has to be subtle; being too obvious about it would turn the movie into a Lifetime Original Movie, and being too covert about it would render her unsympathetic. McDonnell makes it work, with the help of Sayles' wonderful script.

May-Alice moves back to her ancestral home in Louisiana, where all the horrors of growing up there are brought back to add to her tenuous emotional state. She goes through a procession of oddball nurses, all of whom end up quitting in anger, until Chantal. Chantal, played by an understated Alfre Woodard, has her own baggage, and her no-nonsense manner hides a psyche as fragile as May-Alice's. The two grudgingly become friends as each discovers in the other something she needs.

We also meet David Strathairn, who plays a high school rebel on whom May-Alice had a crush. He is unhappily married, and the only pleasures in his life come from doing odd jobs and boating on the bayou. The two strike up a cautious courtship. Strathairn is one of Sayles' stable of favorite actors, who specializes in Steinbeck-like characters, men whose depth of feeling has no way of expressing itself other than in physical ways—I like you a lot, so I'll fix your boat. Strathairn can be so understated that he is sometimes opaque, but here he achieves the balance that makes the entire film work.

John Sayles is the master of empathy. Each of his characters is a real human being, with understandable emotions and dynamic dialog. He has a special gift for creating original and interesting people, even when dealing with minor characters. He has been nominated for several Best Original Screenplay (including for this film), but sadly has never won.