MAY ?? - Eve's Bayou

Just pretend it's still May. What's time, anyway? Do you really know what day it is?

            One week in my American horror film class, we watched two groundbreaking movies from the ‘90s, Silence of the Lambs and Candyman. Released within a year of each other, neither are my favorite but they’re both undoubtedly influential. Silence of the Lambs cleaned up at the Oscars, while attracting justifiable criticism in its stereotypical and grotesque depiction of a trans serial killer. Candyman, based on a short story by Hellraiser auteur Clive Barker, was the rare horror movie to have an urban setting and a Black villain, the iconic Tony Todd. Both feature Kasi Lemmons as the Black best friend.

            In Silence of the Lambs, Lemmons goes jogging with Jodi Foster and gives her a pep talk. In Candyman, she voices anxieties around Cabrini Green and her white friend and coworker’s willingness to just barge in and start interviewing residents, and is brutally murdered by Candyman in the second act. Even from these scant roles, it’s obvious Lemmons is a gifted actress who deserves better. A few years later, Lemmons turned to directing, and it turns out she’s got a knack there too. Her debut film, Eve’s Bayou, is already a masterpiece, and gave a cast of gifted Black actresses some of the best roles of their careers.

            Eve’s Bayou is the coming-of-age story of ten-year-old Eve Batiste, named for her town’s founder. The Batiste family is prominent and wealthy, headed by charming family patriarch Louis, the local doctor. As the summer goes on, young Eve glimpses the adult world of infidelity and heartbreak that surrounds her as she discovers her father’s philandering ways.

            So, growing up and morally complicated dads are scary, but this doesn’t quite sound like a horror movie. And it’s not really, though horror fans will likely enjoy it. What makes Eve’s Bayou nebulous in its genre is that it treats the supernatural world of visions and spellcasting as credible. Eve bonds with her Aunt Mozelle, a psychic whose husbands have an unfortunate habit of dying. We get hints that Eve shares her aunt’s ability, and she’s curious about using Voodoo to impact the world around her. When Mozelle proves reticent on the last one, Eve gets in touch with a rival psychic, the theatrical Elzora. Meanwhile, Mozelle’s vision of a child getting run over by a car prompts the family’s glamorous mother, Roz, to confine Eve and her siblings indoors, where tensions run high.

            Plenty of things happen in this movie that I don’t want to spoil, but much of the movie luxuriates in the dynamics of the Batiste family and Eve’s relationships with individual family members. Some of the best scenes are the unexpected tenderness between Eve and her prim older sister Cisely, or her childish torments of younger brother Poe. The child actors all deliver extraordinary performances, especially a young Jurnee Smollett as Eve. Eve feels like a real kid, not an adult’s idea of childhood innocence. She is chaotic, silly, tender, naïve but also astute and perceptive. She loves fiercely, even as she fights with her siblings over petty squabbles. Everyone else in the movie gets to be as complicated as her. Even as the movie tears Louis off his pedestal, he is never demonized and always loved.

            For all the lush images of the Louisiana setting, the gorgeous ‘60s costumes, and the Batiste’s beautiful home, this is a profoundly literary movie. From Eve’s framing voiceover to Mozelle’s stunning monologues to the snappy dialogue that lights up every scene, the screenplay, also from Lemmons, is a wonder. Here is a film that manages the depth of a novel in under two hours, a testament to what the coming-of-age film can be. It is clearly made with a lifetime’s passion and love.

            One more word about the film’s magic. I love how seriously the movie takes it. It’s not just a childish belief in wonder and possibility; it’s a real tradition, rooted in history, something Mozelle shares with Eve. Though Mozelle’s visions are not taken seriously by every member of her family, she is respected by the townspeople who come to her for guidance, and Roz takes her very seriously indeed. Both Mozelle’s and Elzora’s premonitions are shown to come true, more or less. Eve’s Bayou offers a rare cinematic vision of everyday magic, where the supernatural is not a departure from the real world but a part of it.  

 

Vibecheck: Trees dripping with moss and Eve finding a snake by the water, beauty of the setting with an undercurrent of unpredictable power.

 

Scare Factor: This film’s climax is gripping and jarring, and there are some uncomfortable scenes depicting the attempted molestation of a teenager, but jump scares these are not. Should be safe for the whole family.

Pairs Well With: The history of Eve’s Bayou, a town left to a formally enslaved Black woman by her former owner and father of her children, reminded me of Mama Day, the extraordinary novel by Gloria Naylor. Both texts feature a similar blend of horror and realism, and are all about powerful, complicated Black women and the relationships between them. Tananarive Due’s The Good House is more straightforwardly a horror novel but touches on similar themes of family, fraught history, and Black women’s spiritual traditions.

But How Gay Is It?: Messy het relationships take up much of this movie, from Roz’s marriage to the openly adulterous Louis to Mozelle’s many erotically-charged but ill-fated marriages. Nonetheless, the relationships between women take center stage – especially Eve’s relationship with her sister and her aunt. The closeness between Roz and Mozelle, sisters-in-law who emotionally support one another and often walk arm in arm, has the queerest potential.

Girlfriend’s Corner: This blew me away. The performances were spectacular, especially (and predictably) Jurnee Smollett and Samuel L. Jackson, the script was wonderfully crafted, and the direction was subtle but brilliant. This one didn’t shock me quite as much as The Changeling – I expected a Southern Gothic lovingly crafted by a first-time director to be better than I expected a Seventies ghost-story-slash-conspiracy-thriller to be – but it’s one of my favorite movies of its sort I’ve ever seen, especially for its focus on the relationships of women even as men occasionally drive the story’s action.