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EVE'S BAYOU (1997) (***1/2)

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Set in the bayous of Louisiana in 1962, the film launches with a voice over about memory and murder. The whole film is the reflection of a grown up Eve on her life as a ten-year-old girl — the year she killed her father. This admission sets the tone simmering with family secrets woven together by sex and violence. Just like her confession though, nothing is simple in this family drama, because the truth lies somewhere between various points of view and is clouded by the haze of time.

Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett, ROLL BOUNCE) was named after a slave who saved her master's life and then gave him 16 children. Her family has lived on a vast plantation for decades since. Her father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson, PULP FICTION) is a doctor, who makes house calls to the lonely women in town. Eve is jealous of the way her father favors her teenage sister Cisely (Megan Good, WASTE DEEP). Louis' philandering creates a volatile storm with his beautiful wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield, THE JOSEPHINE BAKER STORY), who is good friends with her husband's sister Mozelle Delacroix (Debbi Morgan, COACH CARTER), who has the gift to see the future, however it has never worked for her, whose three husbands have all died tragically. The way Lenny Mereaux (Roger Guenveur Smith, DO THE RIGHT THING) discovers that his wife Matty (Lisa Nicole Carson, TV's ALLY MCBEAL) has been sleeping with Louis will change the family forever.

In her directing debut, Kasi Lemmons, who made 2007's TALK TO ME, creates a haunting drama that has a unique oft-kilter tone that keeps us on the edge of our seat from the start. The opening voice over sets this tone and it is carried on by the secrets that are kept and revealed and the mystery of the voodoo. Perspective plays a role in all of these elements. When Eve catches her father with Matty, why does Cisely tell her what she does? Mozelle's fortune telling powers seem quite accurate, but Louis reveals that his sister is not a stranger to the inside of an asylum. Then we get the scary marketplace bones reader Elzora (Diahann Carroll, PORGY AND BESS). Is she legit or a scam artist? The truth seems elusive throughout.

Lemmons, who also wrote the screenplay, paints a rich family portrait in this mysterious drama. There is a real sense of history. There are not good guys and bad guys in her story; only flawed humans. No character will escape the film without regrets. Louisiana settings inherently bring a sense of sexually charged danger and Lemmons exploits that perfectly for the story she wishes to tell. It's not just a place to hold the drama in, but it informs the attitudes of the characters. As old secrets are revealed and new ones form, EVE'S BAYOU will have surprises one cannot expect.

Rick DeMott's picture

Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks