Eve's Bayou

REVIEW
Making a most impressive directorial debut, Lemmons has created a stunning, bittersweet and good-humored memory piece which evokes the wistful recollections of youth as wisely as To Kill a Mockingbird. An adult narrator looks back at her youth in the South and on her relationship with her father. As ten-year-old Eve (Smollett) recalls in the film's opening, it is 1962 and the year "I killed my father." In the small Louisiana town of Eve's Bayou, named after a slave and whose inhabitants are mostly her descendants, young Eve's father, Dr. Batiste (Jackson), appears to be the idol of all the women in the area. When she spies him having sex with a neighbor, the entire family is thrown into emotional turmoil which eventually brings to light sibling rivalry, patricide, voodooism, parapsychology and incest. Though serious in content, Lemmons uncannily keeps the tone light and the tempo brisk; her evocation of the South is rapturous, and the subplot concerning spirituality is handled extremely well. Jurnee is an absolute wonder as Eve; rarely has a child actor demonstrated such range and understanding (fittingly, it may be the best child performance since Mary Badham in Mockingbird). As Eve's psychic and emotionally scarred aunt, Morgan gives a knockout performance which is all at once touching, majestic, persuasive and, most of all, full of grace.