Eve’s Bayou
It’d been far too long since I had last seen Kasi Lemmons’s “Eve’s Bayou”- since I watched it in the middle of the 1997 awards season. I feel even stronger about that assessment having now seen it again- hers is a boiler plate of Southern Gothic ideas and heated melodrama that comes from a personal place, and it resonates strongly. It’s a film from a woman who understands the tricky nature of memory when it comes to childhood, and how we conflate our own thoughts and ideas into truths, even when the truth we know tells us otherwise.
I had forgotten that this was an original story by Lemmons, an actor who had graduated to directing after roles in “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Hard Target” and other films; I thought this was an adaptation of a book. But this comes from Lemmons’s own imagination, and that’s where the personal dimension of this film comes into play. It shows just how much audiences have slept on her as a filmmaker since this film that she’s only done a handful of movies since. There’s such a strong voice in this film that I don’t know why I haven’t really kept up with her. Time to change that.
The film takes place in Louisiana, in a small town known as Eve’s Bayou. Its residents are decedents of a nobleman and slave woman who fell in love. We are told their story in the voice of Eve (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), who is 10 when the film takes place, but older in the voiceover by Tamara Tunie, who also sets the stage for the summer when she killed her father. She is one of three children of Roz (Lynn Whitfield) and Louise (Samuel L. Jackson, who was also a producer on the film) Batiste; the other two are Cicily (Meagan Good) and Poe (Jake Smollett), and when we meet them, they are hosting a party. Louise is a respected doctor in town, and much beloved by the people for the work he does. He’s especially popular with the women in town, and it’s a moment when Eve sees him with someone not his wife that will put this tale of infidelity, voodoo, family, premonitions, and memory in motion.
There are few child performances as good as Smollett-Bell’s as Eve is. She builds a character with Lemmons that is engaging and instantly relatable while also being able to do a lot of heavy-lifting emotionally as we see her navigate through the events that will unfold after the party. Her relationship with her old sister, Cicily, is key, and Good is fantastic as a wise older sister who is trying to protect Eve from the realities she has come to understand about their home life the best she can. When Eve tells her of what she saw, Cicily is there to comfort her, and try to give her a comforting truth to believe instead- this also sets up another moment later that gives us a more unsettling look at the home life these young women find themselves faced with. This is a movie where children are faced with trauma, and try to find ways through them. That veneer doesn’t last, though, and Cicily and Eve act out throughout the summer leading to big decisions made by the end when the lies they tell themselves are unable to comfort them anymore.
The adults in this film don’t have it any easier. Louise’s philandering causes friction with Roz that his sister, Mozelle (Debbi Morgan)- who tells fortunes, and has her own troubles with holding on to men (though that is because they keep dying)- tries to help her deal with, although when they meet another fortune teller (played by the fantastic Diahann Carroll), Mozelle finds herself shaken about her life, as well. All of these characters, and their importance, will come back to Eve, and the film’s POV is one of the memories of a young girl, reflecting on a key moment of her childhood, and trying to come to grips with it. That is one of the best qualities in the film, and Lemmons uses the cinematography by Amy Vincent, the music by Terence Blanchard, the costumes and the production design to not only create a credible reality, but one which is ripe for melodrama and the superstitions of childhood to permeate and blossom into something we struggle to wrap our head around in the moment, but open our heart to after it’s done. This movie is something special. It always was. I’m glad I was reminded of that fact in seeing it again.
