by Matthew Buckley
A key rule in any sort of writing is to get your audience hooked at the very beginning of your work. Kasi Lemmons, the writer and director of the new film Eve's Bayou, apparently knows the rule and follows it. The movie's second line is an immediate hook: "The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old."
The Batistes are a prosperous middle-class African American family living in the lush Louisiana backwoods. Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) is the congenial breadwinner of the family, the town doctor with a philanderous bedside manner for the town's female population. His beautiful wife, Roz (Lynn Whitfield), holds down the homestead, well aware of her husband's infidelities. With their three kids, Cisely, Eve, and Poe, the Batistes live like most middle-class families. Though on the outside everything seems amiable, under the surface lies a totally different reality.
The family life of the Louis and Roz is in contrast to the life of Louis' sister Mozelle. Seemingly doomed to have all her husbands die, Mozelle views life with a grim pessimism tempered only by her faith in her supposed psychic powers.
The film begins with a party at the Batiste's residence, during which young Eve spies her father and another woman in a passionate interlude. When she confides this to her sister, she is met with angry resistance. Cisely, an attractive and overly sophisticated fourteen-year old, thinks the world of her father.
When Mozelle fortells that a vehicular accident could claim the life of one of the Batiste children, Roz demands that all the children stay in the house. As would happen with most families, the group gets sick of each other, and young Eve brashly confronts her mother with the realities of Louis's strayings. In the interim, Cisely begins waiting up late for her father to come home from work, and comes dangerously close to becoming a Lolitaesque target of her father's affections.
Nobody wants to confront these harsh truths, at least not in front of the children. As revelations build on revelations, Eve acts against her father in a variety of ways, inevitably weaving their way toward the preordained conclusion.
Lemmons makes a strong directorial debut. The film is admirably full of subplots and interesting scenes, yet still comes in at an hour and fifty minutes. The ability alone to keep a film under two hours long while avoiding a rushed feeling in the film is something that most seasoned directors seem to have problems with, and Lemmons ability to wrap things up is refreshing.
She also does a great job with the actors. Granted, Samuel L. Jackson does not need much work to be a great actor. Though his Louis is for him only a walkthrough performance, he plays Louis' weakness in a manner so touching that we almost feel sorry for him. Lynn Whitfield isn't half-bad as Roz, either. If you look fast, you'll also catch jazz great Branford Marsalis in a small role as one of Rozelle's husbands.
Where Simmons works wonders, though, is in the portrayals of the two girls. While the young boy Poe is largely irrelevant to the film, Eve and Cisely are crucial characters which both require significant range. Jurnee Smollett and Meagan Good, respectively, won the roles, and both of them are amazing. As Eve, Smollett defines being a ten-year old. The irreverent curiousity, the testing of the limits of parental control, the overwhelming initial faith in one's father - Smollett's Eve runs the gamut without a hitch. As Cisely, Good perfectly expresses the confusion of a fourteen-year old girl dealing with the problems of adolesence. Both characters display an amazing depth, particularly Smollett. If Anna Paquin can win a Best Supporting Actres's Oscar for the whiny brat in The Piano, let me suggest Smollett ought to be a landslide winner as well.
For that matter, why not suggest Eve's Bayou for a lot of awards. It's been a damn weak year so far for movies, and Eve's Bayou mixes a compelling story with excellent acting, great scenery, and a strong performance from a new director. No doubt the Academy has missed great films before (Hoop Dreams, anyone?). To pass up recognition for Eve's Bayou would be a shame.