Eve's Bayou Review

 

 

EVE'S BAYOU

I think this is the first time I watched this film in its entirety because there was only one scene in this movie that I remembered that I'll get to later. Majority of my film history is from the 90s as you can see on my page and this is definitely one of the most uniquely feeling from this decade. It's past midnight on May 27 as I write this and I'm struggling to put this into words for this review.

The vibe of Eve's Bayou is wholesome, sad, unsettling, and something else I can't quite put into words. This is a very human story about a young girl who struggles with the affection she has for her father and her sister. This is told through the eyes of titular character Eve and one night at a dinner party she falls asleep and witnesses her father having sex with another woman. This is the whole catalyst for the story and the dynamic of this family.

The relationship between Eve and her father Louis is the catalyst for the story.

 

Eve's sister Cisely is almost as important to this story as she is the first person Eve divulges this secret too. Their mother finds out through her own means as her husband who is a doctor is frequently away and doesn't come back sometimes for days at a time and the people in the town frequently see the woman that comes to visit his office.

The father's sister, Mozelle Batiste Delcroix is actually the only character in this film whose growth isn't related to her brother's infidelities. But she is one also let down by love, but not in the same way as with the daughters or the mother, Mozelle's conflict resides in that every man she marries dies. She had three husbands and they all died. The one we see at the beginning of the movie is implied to have died in a car crash. I'm not sure if it was directly from the scene where they left the party because her husband was drunk and she was driving so it must have been another time after that night and this was before it was revealed that she is a seer and can read fortunes or tell the future so that's where my confusion had lied, but yes I think it was another day that his death occurred, nonetheless she struggles with it believing that she caused all of these deaths and with her gift she never sees it coming. Though her plot is separate from the ongoings of the father and his cheating she doesn't feel out of place and I believe it resolves in a satisfying way. I just think the man she ended up with at the end looks very goofy in that wig.

 

But back to the main plot Eve watches as her father slowly tears their family apart. Her mother is paranoid because of a vision by Mozelle in addition to her husband never being around and her two daughters fighting and talking out of line because of their frustrations of their father. As I type this I think the mother should've had just a bit more time at the end to express her feelings because a big point was when she visited another fortune teller to see her future about her husband and she was told to find respite in her children and that her husband will fall on his own sword and in three years time she will be happy. That seer was right. He did fall on his own sword in a sense.

So one day Eve goes back to talk to her sister after she closes herself off after Eve makes fun of her for getting her period and this goes on for days until Cisely finally tells Eve that one night after her parents were fighting she went down to go see her dad and he kissed her and when she tried to pull away he slapped her and knocked her to the ground. This is one scene I remember seeing from long ago. Eve already had issues with her father ever since she caught him with that other woman at the party and she definitely picked up on it again when she was with him on one of visits with a patient so finding out that her dad tried to sexually assault her sister and that he hit her drove her mad and wanted her father dead. This results in Eve going back to the other fortune teller/voodoo practitioner after her aunt Mozelle tells her that she doesn't know how to kill someone with voodoo.

This might've been the first time I've seen Megan Good and this is still the most complex role I've seen her in.

 

The acting in this movie is actually very good by everyone here from Lynn Whitfield, to Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollet, and Megan Good, but Diahann Carroll as the voodoo practitioner in this scene is where it felt off. She felt too goofy in this overall serious movie especially at the end of this scene where she laughs hysterically at Eve. It felt really out of place but that's the only part in the whole film I felt that didn't work. So anyway Eve is dead set on killing her father and talks to this woman. This woman barely pushes back on a child requesting to kill someone. As an adult she should have the right mind to refuse the child, but I feel like greed was probably her motivation as Eve gave her a whole $20 bill which back in 1962 was like $200+ today. Still, that's not all that much given.

But what Eve probably didn't realize is that she killed her father before she even talked to the woman. She went to the woman's tent first, but she wasn't there and the woman who her father has been constantly cheating with's husband shows up right behind her and Eve deliberately tells him indirectly that her father is sleeping with his wife. One day Eve decides to look for her father and finds him at a bar with the woman and the husband also shows up. Her father being the asshole that he is eggs the man on and he ends up getting shot and killed.

Later after his funeral Eve finds a letter in her father's room saying his side of the story on that night that Cisely came down. He said that Cisely is the one that kissed him first, but I'm not sure if I should believe this considering this man is a habitual liar and cheater and later when Eve confronts her sister about this she says she wasn't lying and Eve takes Cisely's hands revealing she has her aunt's gift and gets flashes of that night, but Cisely is unsure of exactly how it went down.

It's a sad movie that didn't make me feel downtrodden. The story of this film is the most engaging and we don't see many films like this especially from black creators that involves spirituality like voodoo in it and it doesn't make the movie feel too much like fantasy within it. The set design of Eve's Bayou really helps with the feel of the film. It definitely has those deep South vibes. The historical setting on the other hand I don't think is as apparent. I didn't realize it was set in the 60s most of the time until I saw bus but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. This is a story that can be told in any time period. For the cinematography and editing I think it's fine, but there was one scene in particular I thought was really good. When Mozelle tells Eve the story of when she found out how much her second husband loved her and how he died there's a cool shot of her facing the mirror and as she recounts this the flashback plays in the background in the reflection and when Mozelle walks away from the camera she enters the mirror and thus enters the scene. I thought that was a really unique way to set up and transition a scene. I've never seen that before.

Overall Eve's Bayou is a very well made film that I recommend that everyone should see at once. It is quite amazing how well Jurnee and Megan acted in this movie when they were children.