EVE'S BAYOU (Trimark) Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Jurnee Smollett, Debbi Morgan, Meagan Good. Screenplay: Kasi Lemmons. Producers: Caldecot Chubb and Samuel L. Jackson Director: Kasi Lemmons. MPAA Rating: R (sexual situations, adult themes, profanity) Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I wanted to like EVE'S BAYOU even more than I did, for many of the same reasons I suspect some critics have been overly effusive in their praise. After all, here was a film with an African-American cast in which race was largely irrelevant to the story. Here was a film directed by an African-American woman, adding some much-needed pigment and estrogen to a club even more conspicuously male than it is conspicuously white. Here was a first time film-maker, and a pretty decent one at that, adding the "excitement of discovery" factor. And here was a film which was actually _about_ something.
Kasi Lemmons' writing and directing debut certainly deserves better than to be singled out for the race either of Lemmons or her cast. It's a contemplative period piece set in the Louisiana bayou of the 1960s, where the upper-middle class Batiste family lives on the same land several generations have lived before. Father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson), a genial physician, services the community in many ways, some of them in opposition to his marital vows; mother Roz (Lynn Whitfield) tries to ignore Louis's indiscretions while caring for their three children. It becomes difficult for 10-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett) and her teenage sister Cicely (Meagan Good) to ignore them, however, especially when Eve catches her father in the act with one of his mistresses. As Eve becomes more and more aware of Louis's darker side, she begins to contemplate dark acts which could change the family forever.
Far from being a simple domestic drama, EVE'S BAYOU delves into the complex subjects of memory and perception. Events are constantly being revisited and re-evaluated, in scenes crafted by Lemmons with a seductive ambiguity. In the film's finest moment, Eve's Aunt Mozelle (Debbi Morgan) recalls a painful moment as a reflection in a mirror, moving from observer to participant in a few short steps. A psychic counselor haunted by the untimely death of three husbands, Mozelle also becomes the focal point for a subtle juxtaposition of past and future. Though able to see the future clearly enough, Mozelle finds herself able to interpret the past only as the product of a "curse." It's a lyrical and thought-provoking film Lemmons has fashioned, in which the interpretation of events becomes ever more challenging.
Lemmons does such a fine job of introducing ideas and creating images that the more fundamental failings of EVE'S BAYOU become all the more disappointing. The narrative grabs at bits and pieces of atmosphere -- period art direction, voodoo curses, French dialects -- without ever really settling into a convincing sense of place. Plot threads like Mozelle's romance with a drifter artist (Lemmons' husband Vondie Curtis Hall) are forced into five minute chunks, leaving the story feeling slightly fragmented. As for the much-lauded acting...well, Morgan is certainly solid as the solemn Mozelle. Other performances are far more sporadic, from a nondescript Lynn Whitfield to a bug-eyed Diahann Carroll as a cackling voodoo priestess.
Make no mistake, EVE'S BAYOU is a good film: deeply felt, consistently intriguing and often visually striking. It's also a wonderful thing that a female African-American first-time film-maker has done such impressive work. Even adding those things together doesn't make EVE'S BAYOU a great film, however. Certainly I'll be looking forward to Lemmon's next project, when that raw talent as a director and passion as a story-teller join forces with a bit more focus and discipline. Then it might be time to start talking about Lemmons as an A-list director, irrespective of race, or gender, or how many films she has made.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 blue bayous: 7.
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