Word: bayou
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...father is Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson, who also produced the film), a moderately successful colored doctor releated to the isolated Louisiana bayou. It is the who must die, yet to view the story in the context of the inevitable death does an injustice to the film. There are larger forces at work and greater issues that elevate the film above the presupposed tragedy...
...fact, Eve's Bayou is not about him, but of the women in his family. His wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield), fearful of her husband's infidelity, holds the Batiste family under a tight watch. She overpowers her daughters, Cisely (Meagan Good) and Eve (Jurnee Smollett), although the strength of her convictions may not be entirely rational. His sister Mozelle (Debbi Morgan), the emotional center of the family, is a healer of a different sort. While Louis safely inhabits the bounds of modern society, Mozelle is a clairvoyant who secretly tends to others through voodoo. She can sense others' secrets through...
Voodoo is an omnipresent force in Eve's Bayou, one that imbues the film with a mysticism that balances the inherent realism with an aura of dark fantasy. Lemmons implicitly contrasts the rational Louis, whose concerns are limited to those of the modern world, with the spiritual Mozelle. The practice of voodoo plays a natural role within the Batiste family. The adolescent Cisely rejects the practice to assert her authority, while Eve gradually learns to grasp Mozelle's clairvoyance...
...recounts finding their father with another woman to her skeptical sister. As Cisely tells a revised version of the story, she and Eve step into the tale, calling into question the validity of Eve,s original version. As with everything else in the film, the flashbacks in Eve's Bayou are fallible. We so often accept flashbacks and other such dramatic devices as literal fact; in Eve's Bayou, nothing is so concrete...
Directorial flourishes such as these elevate Eve's Bayou and bolster the story. The film is a collection of indelibly etched images, from the casual falling of a hat to a spider weaving its web. But Lemmons and cinematographer Amy Vincent never allow visual flair to obscure the story. Lemmons uses these tricks sparingly in favor of understated, poetic imagery...