Film Notes: Eve's Bayou

As far as directorial debuts go, Eve’s Bayou is in a league of its own. Kasi Lemmons made clear from the beginning that she was here to tell stories about the black experience that weren’t just centered on the pain of racial inequality. Blackness is intrinsic to the story of Eve’s Bayou, but it is examined through characters who are fully realized and a thorough representation of the multifaceted Creole culture. What also makes this story so powerful, though, is its cross-cultural relatability as a coming-of-age story. Any viewer can recognize the heartbreak that comes with a loss of innocence, the dizzying disillusionment of your worldview being shaken for the first time. Lemmons’s storytelling is gentle at times, and at others jarring, as if we are the Eve to her Aunt Mozelle. And though this film is largely about the unreliability of memory, the viewer can certainly trust Lemmons to deliver a story that has even more substance than style – and it certainly does have style.

The family drama could be powerful in any setting, but having a 1960s Louisiana bayou as the location elevates the film; the Southern Gothic elements heighten the tension as young Eve’s idyllic perception of her family is tested. The Hoodoo mysticism invoked by the Creole folklore adds complexity to thematic questions of memory and faith, and whispers of infidelity bear even more gravitas when held between curtains of Spanish moss. The location also catalyzes the Batiste family’s generational trauma: Eve (Jurnee Smollett) and her siblings are the youngest generation descending from Jean Paul Batiste, a slave owner. Both the bayou and the main character are named for Eve, the enslaved woman he freed, gifted the land to, and impregnated. The duality of gift and curse, of a complex legacy, is a weight upon the Batiste family, and raises the question of how much of our fate is in our own hands. 

While her writing is already stunning, Lemmons deserves equal praise for her direction. She pulls performances from Smollett and Meagan Good (who plays older sister Cisely) that rival the emotional power of their elders: Samuel L. Jackson is both deeply charming and deeply complex as patriarch Louis Batiste, Lynn Whitfield is devastatingly restrained in her role as his wife, Roz, and Debbi Morgan should have won twice as many awards for her Aunt Mozelle. It makes sense that Lemmons, an actor herself, could excel at direction, but her leadership on set has continued to inspire. In a retrospective with Vanity Fair, Smollett reflected on her experience: “Seeing a Black woman lead this crew, and having heads of department who were Black women, was my norm … but as I grew up and started having the opposite experience, I became very aware of how rare that was. And I gained a level of appreciation for my craft being rooted in that,” later adding “how radical it was [for the film] to center Black life in the South, and to center it without it being in direct response to whiteness.” 

The film’s existence truly is radical, and it is also deeply watchable. For a film to be so technically impressive and also so approachable is no small feat, but the lush, beautiful frames will draw you in, even as they are juxtaposed with adult Eve’s opening narration. The magic of the film lies in those nuances, in the delicate balance of comfort and danger, just as it is in the Bayou.