Le secret du bayou

A bayou is the Southern U S term for an ox-bow lake, a stretch of stagnant water left behind by a river running through level countryside after it has made a short cut through one of its banks. The characters in this film have been left behind by history in the Bayou country of Louisiana. They are nice, middle-class creole folk going nowhere. Louis Baptiste (Samuel L Jackson) is the local doctor living in a fine frame house with his fragile ex-beauty queen wife and three children including the film's narrator, 10 year old Eve (Jurnee Smollett). Family legend has it that an earlier Baptiste, a French general in the Napoleonic era, had his life saved by a local black slave girl, the ancestral Eve. She married him and had 16 children, thus kick-starting local development. By the early 1960s, in which this movie is set, the Bayou is your archetypal Southern backwater. Louis didn't get that bit at medical school about not screwing your patients and in fact it seems to be an integral part of his practice. His sister Mozelle (Debbie Morgan) is also a therapist of a sort - having the gift (or curse) of second sight she finds lost relatives by exercising her psychic powers. Unfortunately she's hopeless as to her own affairs- her three husbands, all much loved, have all died prematurely.

At the start of the film Eve, in voice over mode, announces " The year I killed my father, I was 10." Then we switch to a party at the Baptise house where Eve discovers her Dad having it off with a patient in the carriage house. He laughs it off, but the seed of doubt is planted, and when there is an incident involving Louis and Eve's older sister Cisely (Meagan Good) the stage is set for tragedy. In fact the movie is not so much about murder as about guilt, the especially keen variety which afflicts someone who injures another he or she adores and is dependent on.

On the way, as the film moves through lush swampy scenery at an appropriately languid pace, we meet the rest of the Baptiste family and Diahann Carroll, enjoying herself as a downmarket sorceress. There's no sign of the racially conscious South - as far as race is concerned we might as well be in the highlands of Scotland. The whole film has a dreamlike quality (Brigadoon?). As Eve explains, her story is about the way memory is formed often as much by imagination as by what actually happened. I seem to remember they told us that in Psych 101 but it is rather more poetically put on this occasion.

The photography is gorgeous and the acting more than proficient. Jurnee Smollett in her first role stands out, but Debbie Morgan as Mozelle the psychic aunt produces a three dimensional character from a part which could easily have been done as caraciature. Samuel L Jackson fills the bill as the charming philanderer Louis.

The film is apparently the first from writer-director Kasi Lemmons, though Samuel L is credited as one of the producers and very likely had a say in the production. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to introduce all the main characters in such a rush at the party in the opening sequence but it's all sorted out in the end. The brief black and white "psychic" sequences fit seamlessly into the rest of the film and somehow one doesn't stop to ask just how Mozelle does it.

At the end of the day, you wonder how a child of 10 could go through what Eve has gone through and not become a gibbering wreck. At the end, she sits on the edge of the Bayou with sister Cisely, contemplating a gorgeous sunset, apparently at peace with the world. Is the atmosphere so thick, so cloying, in the Bayou, that even murder and mayhem are quickly forgotten? It's a beautiful sensuous (and sensual) atmosphere though, and worth sampling.

This was a delightfully good movie. Set in the Louisiana bayou country in the 60's, it is a wonderful story of a well-to-do black family caught up in family tensions that drive the plot but never overpower the family's love for each other. Infidelity, an over-protective mother, the psychic aunt's tragic loss of loves and a delicious dose of voodoo all make this a good watch. The child actress, Jurnee Smollett as Eve, delivers a beautiful performance with talent far beyond her years. Debbie Morgan is terrific as the fortune-telling wise, but cursed-in -love Aunt Mozelle.

Lynn Whitfield and Samuel L. Jackson are also superb as the parents whose complex and troubled relationship's problems spill over onto the children, especially the two daughters, Eve and Cisely. Cisely sees herself as a buffer comforting her father and trying to protect him from her mother whom Cisely sees as a rival for her father's affections. Eve bounces around amidst the angst of being a middle child and the desire to understand the adults' world. This definitely a movie to see. It's a shame that jewels like this get overlooked in the usual Hollywood hype machine.

The first time I saw this film I rated it 8; the 2nd time it got a 9. There is much visual beauty in the film: a lovely, serene setting and many gorgeous women. The film focussed on the devastation caused by a father who could not resist beautiful women even though he loved his family. As the film ended, I was left counting the number of people who would have considerable guilt to deal with but the end was, nevertheless, very satisfying.

"MEMORY IS A SELECTION OF IMAGES, SOME ELUSIVE, OTHERS PRINTED INDELIBLY ON THE BRAIN. THE SUMMER I KILLED MY FATHER, I WAS 10 YEARS OLD"

With those shocking opening frames from the movie, 'Eve's Bayou'(1997), I was hooked from start go.

'Eve's Bayou' is an anomaly. It has achieved a rare distinction of excellence in all departments of film making; from the direction to the writing, from the acting to the cinematography.

Here was a film not content with telling a tale of nostalgic retrospection. Instead, it shocked the senses of the unsuspecting viewers with an eerie collage of imagery, underscoring the chilling suspense with an undercurrent of tumultuous emotion (jealousy, loss and sadness; anger, vengeance and guilt) all culminating into the inevitable foreshadowed tragedy.

But of course, this is far too distinguished a film to present an easy resolution. From there spring forth the painful revelation on the very essence of memory and the perception of truth, distilled and faceted with the passage of time. A valuable lesson indeed.

Poetic and shadowy, the dream-like moods sustained throughout this poignant film is its over-riding strength. For here was a film which sights and sound has transcended the mere plot convention of its humble genre origins. Thankfully, the film turned out the better for it. Coupled with the celebrated fact that this was the product of a first time director(Kasi Lemmons), one can't help but feel the divine intervention bestowed upon this film to make it such an magically entrancing experience.

Alongside 'Shawshank Redemption' and 'The Sweet Hereafter', 'Eve's Bayou' certainly ranks as one of the most hauntingly beautiful piece of cinema ever committed to film.

I love to discover that a film which I have never heard of turns out to be a gem, especially when it makes you think. Mind candy it is not.

I came across this film in the budget DVD section of one of the chain stores when I was buying a bunch of films that I had never heard of to watch when it got too hot in summer to move outside. After it had lain around for several months, I finally got around to watching it, and it just blew me away!

This film held my attention from the opening scene. To begin with, it was set in a completely different world - Louisiana, which may be an American state, but is still "foreign". The film contained elements of mystery, family life, and infidelity in an exotic mix spiced with voodoo. The story centered around an upper middle class creole family, descended from a Frenchman and a freed African slave, who bore her liberator 16 children!

The film began with a party at the elegant home of the Doctor, Louis, the father of the child Eve and philandering husband of Roz. The family included Louis' mother and sister, who had the gift of second sight and who "was not unfamiliar with the inside of a mental hospital." From that party, events unfolded, the significance of which depended on the perception of the participant. Eventually tragedy strikes, but was it provoked or did he have it coming?

Not only was the setting and story oh so different, the performances were excellent, including the small cameo roles, and the background music just so haunting that I agree with all those reviewers who found it to be one of the best films ever.

I would just love to see what this group would do with an all black version of "Streetcar named Desire."