Quick, name a film by a black female director. Better yet, name a black female director, any black female director. Got one? I didn't think so. Black history month is as good a time as any to evaluate the inequality still inherent in the Hollywood system. The almost total lack of black women behind the camera might lead one to draw the false conclusion that no one from the group has emerged yet to distinguish herself. With the modern masterpiece Eve's Bayou, however, writer-director Kasi Lemmons refutes that fallacy.
Drawing from her southern heritage, Lemmons has crafted an enigmatic marvel that effectively blends poetry with pathos. Eve's Bayou, the titular setting, becomes a community firmly embedded in our minds. The characters we come to know as if they were our own family — their strengths, their weaknesses, their fears, are our own.
Like The Godfather, Eve's Bayou opens with a festive party sequence, designed to introduce several characters at once. We meet Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) the patriarch of the Batiste home — a doctor and a considerably wealthy man for a black in the rural South. His wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield) is a stunningly beautiful young woman, sporting a smile that conceals her insecurities. The Batiste children — Cisely (Meagan Good), Poe (Jake Smollett) and the film's narrator, Eve (Jurnee Smollett) — appear to complete the final elements of a happy, well-adjusted family, at least at the outset. The device of the party also introduces several other key characters, most notably Louis' sister, Mozelle (Debbi Morgan) a seemingly eccentric practitioner of divination. She shares with Eve this strange clairvoyance, which she simply calls "the gift of sight."
These characters are what truly give the movie its power and they are brought to vibrant life by a superb ensemble cast. Essentially, just about all of the performances are memorable, but two, in particular, stand out. Samuel L. Jackson — quite possibly the most charismatic actor alive in America today — and the young Meagan Good give such deep, multifaceted performances that they transcend any traditional character descriptions.
Jackson oozes charisma from every pore, despite what we learn about his character's prurient behavior, and Good nicely instills in Cisely the perfect degree of ambiguity.
Their peculiar father-daughter relationship is at the heart of the film, wavering unendingly between the wholesome and the grotesque. This duality suggests, perhaps, a thin line that exists in any and all familial relationships.
Within the context of the film, it's simply great acting.
Another breathtaking aspect of Eve's Bayou is its subtle, rhythmic mood. The film, as dictated by the narrator's easy, poetic lamentations seems less like a film and more like a work of literature. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that Lemmons' screenplay was an original story. So rarely in cinema do we see the kind of complex characterizations and atmospheric competence that Lemmons presents to us in this film.
It certainly does feel like it had to have been a novel once, in the way it skillfully weaves such a thought-provoking mystery of human emotion.
But, then, it also invokes the lyric reverie of a poem, especially in its semi-circular storytelling and lack of a clear-cut resolution. At whichever level the film impacts you, its gentle, lasting power is undeniable.
