Eve's Bayou (1997)

This came highly recommended by a NYT reviewer, but yikes, before I was 1/2 way through it became real torture. Cast is mainly female--old & young--and they just scream and carry on in jealous nonsense with fortune telling and "voodoo?" thrown in. Samuel Jackson-- who the heck convinced him to play in this mess-- is reduced to a clichéd prop. 1960 Louisiana Bayou?? with blacks constantly in haute bourgeois costume with Connecticut accents is beyond laughable. The latter is cool--if that's what the director wants--but the story is pure soap opera slush! Bayou photography is great, and set against these ridiculous characters it comes as a great relief. The movie just slogs along with a cast of over-dressed harpies, both old and young.

which i am embarrassed to admit we only went to see because of the coincidence of the name!! But this absurd 'excuse' to see a film we'd heard nothing about (no publicity or marketing - just an option among several others at our local multiplex cinema, lured in by a beautiful poster which it turned out proved to be a foretaste of a gorgeously shot movie) paid off richly. We are seldom impressed as we were with 'Eve's Bayou'; this layering of memories, filtered through the perceptions of three distinctly different women, was such an intelligent and suspenseful use of the much-abused medium of film, that I thought about and remembered it yesterday after 11 years (!) and decided to rent it again; I am confident I will like it just as much on second viewing. Now that i know it was a low budget first outing for the (female) director (whose DP was likewise female - something which is STILL an anomaly, even today, where commercially released features are concerned), I am simply blown away....Roger Ebert is absolutely right; the fact that this was not nominated for an Academy Award means they were simply not paying attention; for shame! It ought to have been a runaway success, and at very least nominated for Best Director, Best Supporting Actress(es), Best DP, Best Costumes, Best Screenplay. Unfortunately, Kasi Lemmons' follow- up to this (the gruesomely dark 'Valentine' something-or-other) was nowhere near as accomplished as this (though it was still good, by any movie standards). Perhaps she lost heart after being so overlooked? (and if so, who could blame her?!). I hope this film gets a re-release and much belated marketing 'push', with a perhaps more prominent placing at the local DVD stores, at least (I'm having to order my rented copy in 'cause it's not in the store...)!

"Eve's Bayou" is the name of the small settlement along the bayou that former slave Eve gave her name to. The story is told from a young girl's point of view, Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett), who is narrating as an adult. It was filmed in Louisiana, in the bayou areas north of Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans. I particularly like the exposition during the last scene where Eve describes our lives and memories as an intricate tapestry of all of our memories. This movie is about Eve's memories. The movie starts by saying that Eve was 11 years old when she killed her father. We don't find out what she means until the very end. Her father is small time doctor Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) who mostly makes routine house calls, dispenses aspirin, and flirts with the lonely ladies. He says he loves his wife, he appears to be a good father to his 2 daughters and son, but occasionally strays, and that is what gets him in hot water. Meagan Good is fine as the older sister Cisely Batiste. Lynn Whitfield is also good as the wife and mother Roz Batiste.SPOILERS. When Eve wanders into the storage shed during a party, and falls asleep, she awakens to find her dad and Mrs Mereaux engaged in sexual activity. This scares her, but what really gets her going is when sis tells her that dad made advances towards her, then hit her when she withdrew. Little Eve decided she needed to have her dad dead, goes to voodoo lady Elzora (Diahann Carroll) for a spell. What really gets dad is when Mrs Mereaux's husband shows up and finds him and his wife together at a bar. He tells Loius to never speak to his wife again or he will kill him. Louis smiles and yells 'good night Matty', and the jealous husband shoots and kills him. So, Eve really was responsible, because it was she in an earlier conversation that hinted to Mr Mereaux that her dad and his wife 'both seemed to come home late a lot.' Eve feels bad when she later finds out her sister's story was not true, she had been the one who made an advance by kissing dad as a mistress might, and dad rejected that which made sis mad enough to lie about it.Of interest to me, Branford Marsalis had a small role as friend Harry.

Writer/director Kasi Lemmons and her outstanding cast have outdone themselves in the sublime "Eve's Bayou." "Eve's Bayou" is fleet but not in a hurry. The scenes are clear and lean against the richness of the setting, but they flow leisurely toward the climax, like a punt bearing two lovers languidly downstream."Eve's Bayou" is such a great story, partly because Lemmons herself is a master storyteller who is particularly gifted at strong endings, partly because the splendid cast embodies the characters so fully that the events actually seem to be happening to them, instead of unfolding from a screenplay.What a beautiful film it is: Not an overdecorated "period" portrait, but a film in which the people move easily through town and country homes and landscapes which frame and define them.