EVE'S BAYOU a film essay by Sean Lee
Directed and Written by Kasi Lemmons Eve Batiste: Jurnee Smollett Cisely Batiste: Meagan Good Louis Batiste: Samuel L. Jackson Roz Batiste: Lynn Whitfield Mozelle Batiste Delacroix: Debbi Morgan
Evaluation: **** (out of ****)
The summer she killed her father, Eve was 10 years old – or at least, that's what Eve believes as she laconically states in the opening and closing of Eve's Bayou. The audience, however, gets the feeling that the truth is far more complex. To dissect Kasi Lemmons' gorgeous directorial debut through the validation of its presumed truths would be irreverent to the rich tapestry woven by Lemmons. However, as the film is oft-times enigmatic in its lyric, a thoughtful examination of the role of truth in Eve's Bayou may lend a hand at elucidating Lemmons' intentions. Eve's Bayou is about ‘the selection of images' and the awareness that reality may elude the images we select as truths.
In the opening shot of Eve's Bayou, the film starts in black and white and turns to color as Eve's voice-over ends and the film's story begins. The black and white sequence corresponds to Eve's telling of the Baptistes' and her own past. As Eve's narrative ends and the film turns to color, the audience is left with the question of who is now telling the story. Are we seeing Eve's recollection of her own ‘selection of images' or are we watching the events being objectively told by Lemmons? In a film where there are different sides to every story, the question of reliable narration plays a role in how we come to understand it. As expected, the answer to who is telling the story in Eve's Bayou is also ambiguous. There are some scenes, though few, where Eve is not present, which would indicate that Eve may not be telling the story, or at least in the capacity of sole narrator. On the other hand, Eve possesses to some degree Mozelle's clairvoyance and the possibility that Eve's mother telling her what Eve didn't know is also quite possible.
Our best indication, then, may lie in the opening scene. There are two items in particular that I find interesting in the sequence. One is the image of Eve – not the one played by Jurnee Smollett, but the very first Eve Baptiste as told in the opening narrative. She is standing at the edge of the bayou looking into her reflection in the water, right before the camera pans into color. The other item of interest is the transition into color itself, and the fact that it is achieved not by a fade or dissolve or traditional cut, but through what seems to be a matte with black and white on one side of a tree trunk and color on the other. This invisible cut reinforces the continuity of location while at the same time clearly indicating a temporal change. Complemented by the image of the first Eve Baptiste gazing into the water as it changes to color offers explanation to who is telling the story of Eve's Bayou. It is neither completely a pastiche of recollections of Louis Baptiste's daughter, nor is the story told entirely through the objective eye of the director. The story of Eve's Bayou is told through the Bayou itself and this is implied by the double-entendre of the bayou's name. Which Eve is the Eve of Eve's Bayou? Both women gaze into the bayou and in its reflection find a piece of the Baptiste story.
Reflections play an important role in Eve's Bayou. Not only does the movie begin with a reflection of Eve, but the movie ends with the reflection of the descendants of Eve reflected in the Bayou. Though the use of mirrors as a symbol of duality has been discussed in film analyses to the point of becoming a cinematic cliché, I feel I must discuss Kasi Lemmons' extensive use of mirrors in Eve's Bayou because reflections play an important role in a movie whose verisimilitude lies below the surface. Take, for instance, the scene where Eve tells Cisely that she saw their father with Mrs. Mereaux. While Eve is describing her father's indiscretion, we see Cisely both facing Eve and reflected in the mirror as she desperately tries to make sense of what she is hearing. Through the use of the mirror, Lemmons presents the dichotomy between the Cisely who wants to believe that her father is faithful and the Cisely that believes Eve. We find that Cisely is unable to decide how to view her father – perhaps she sees him as a womanizer, as she tells Eve later that she believed her all along; or, she may believe that her mother doesn't really love her father, and forgivingly views him as feeling unloved. This indeed is the confusion that will foreshadow the tragic miscommunication that occurs near the end of the film.
So what really happens the night Cisely goes down to comfort his father? Was it Cisely who kisses his father not as a daughter but as a woman, or was it Louis, who kisses his daughter not as a father but as a lover? Just as our preceding examination of the story's narration yielded not some absolute answer, but a variegate one, we can be assured that Lemmons will not be so conspicuous as to offer an easy explanation to the night's events. On the other hand, Eve's Bayou is not cinema verite, and there is no presumption that the truth needs to be presented explicitly. Nonetheless, I feel Lemmons suggests, again through the use of mirrors, that perhaps Louis' interpretation of events as written in his letter to Mozelle is correct. In the scene, when Cisely sits on her father's lap and leans over to kiss him, we see part of her body reflected in the mirror while Louis is not. Had the mirror reflected them both, we might have said that both were willing partners in the act and the mirror reflected the duality between father/daughter and secret lovers. Lemmons, however, deliberately cuts off the reflection in this scene so that only Cisely is reflected to show that it is Cisely, who in an attempt to substitute for her mother's absent love, expresses love in a way that crosses acceptable boundaries.
Returning to the ideas posed in the introduction, is there anything in Eve's Bayou that can be construed as absolute and with the efficiency and confidence of Eve's opening narrative? There is, and it is none other than Eve's words that open and close the film. `The summer I killed my father I was ten years old.' Lemmons makes this lucid in the scene where Eve meets Mr. Mereaux in the market. At first, Eve asks Mr. Mereaux about Mrs. Mereaux, but goes no further. She asks where the apples are and there is a shot of her walking up to the apple cart, stopping in front of the cart and pondering the apples, and then turning around to intimate to Mr. Mereaux her father's affair with Mrs. Mereaux. Through the reference to the biblical Eve, Lemmons conspicuously makes the argument that it is indeed Eve who kills her father. The apples, which are metonymic with temptation, drive Eve to sin against her father. Yet even in this observation, Lemmons is able to create some ambiguity, for even though she talks to Mr. Mereaux right after looking at the apples, she also summons the powers of Elzora in the same scene. Was it Elzora or Mr. Mereaux who kills Louis Baptiste? If Eve was the catalyst for her father's death, could not Elzora carry out Eve's wishes through Mr. Mereaux? This is a thoughtful question posed by Lemmons and our interpretation likely depends on whether we are romantically or pragmatically inclined.
Eve's Bayou is not a film with simply stated truths; even when we seem to find an answer, Lemmons turns the answer to a question. Eve seems to be narrating the movie, or is she? Louis takes advantage of his daughter's adoration, or does he? Through Lemmons' inspired use of her camera, we may glean a few explanations for ourselves so that we may feel some comfort in our ability to comprehend. Certainly I have tried to do so in writing this essay. At the same time, however, I would allude to Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock as a reminder that some ideas are ultimately ineffable and the search for definitive truth is made both in vain and vanity. Eve's Bayou transcends the need for simple answers as Lemmons carefully leaves its meaning open to interpretation. Life is not of black and white, and the story of Eve's Bayou lies within the immutable grays that romance our subjective interpretations of truth.
Copyright 1998 Sean Lee
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