That was an excellent one.

So much average

Boring

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I was craving a drama, light on the exaggeration, yet, rich and satisfying to my emotional needs. I found it in the 1999 classic, Eve's Bayou. The time is 1962; the place is the Louisiana Bayou... Not the "Bayou" that conjures visions of crocodile infestations and starving mosquitoes-No. I'm referring to a huge, white, plantation style home that sits on bay area property... Property, owned by it's inhabitants (the Batiste family) for centuries.They are privileged, intelligent, mysterious people who make you want to know more about them.Early on, we discover by the narrative of an adult Eve, that it is through the lineage and fine reputation of Dr. Louis Baptiste (played by Samuel Jackson) that these luxuries can be afforded. Furthermore, it is Dr. Batiste, who resides over this family as husband, father, son and brother. He is, by the very definition, a patriarch of southern distinction-the type whose presence can fill a room without speaking one word. But like all flawless appearances, there lies beneath, a blemish or two... Unfortunately it is the young and precocious Eve (played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell) who discovers these imperfections... Or should I say, sensitive "improprieties' and becomes traumatized. Supporting the eclipse of a life they once knew are the emotional dramatizations of her older sister, Cisely (Meagan Good), and her glamorous, sheltered mother, Roz (Lynn Whitfield)-One coming of age, the other, spiritually displaced.For the full review please visit https://niume.com/post/231587 or cootw.com

This film is now showing on cable here in Australia, and is a far better than average offering.Written and directed by Kasi Lemmons, the film is a powerful family drama set in the sixties in the south of the USA. It stars Samuel L Jackson as a small town doctor with a wandering eye. The story is told from the viewpoint of his middle child, Eve, wonderfully played by Jurnee Smollett, who sees her middle-class family life threatened by her father's infidelities.No tale set in a bayou village could exist without references to black magic and voodoo, and this film also has them as a rather central part of the plot. But these elements are handled skilfully and believably, and heighten the tension that develops.One of the interesting tools used by Lemmons is to tell and retell a story from different characters' perspectives, asking the viewer to determine which is more truthful, and indeed, whether the truth is paramount.Jackson gives a sparkling performance as Dr Louis Batiste, a man of warmth and generosity who is well regarded by the local community that he serves. His family is seemingly a happy and close one, until the children begin to question some of the adult behaviour they witness.Jurnee Smollett's Eve is the main protagonist around whom much of the story is centred, and she effortlessly moves back and forth between being a precocious brat and a young woman with powerful emotions. The rest of the cast is also very good, including a voluptuous Lisa Nicole Carson as the temptress Mattie Mereaux, and Diahann Carroll as a bayou witch.This film moves along at a good pace and is a little more than you might expect.

Put Samuel L. Jackson, Debbi Morgan and Jurnee Smollet together and you can expect sterling performances. This trio could make "Conan the Barbarian" feel like one of the great works. Perform from a screenplay as touching and accomplished as the one for "Eve's Bayou" and you can expect wonders. A classically polished drama about family turmoil, repressed emotions and protracted heartbreak, provide one of the finest films of 1997.As for that acting, the central scenes between Morgan and Smollet -- including a brilliant mirror scene -- makes for one the best moments in 1997's cinema. Jackson plays his part with magnificent ease, nobility brimming from his every gesture. The remaining members of the cast are so uniformly great, it completes the sense of seamlessness, like a perfectly realized banquet. Sit down to this and savor the human sumptuousness.

A family drama like no other, Kasi Lemmons' "Eve's Bayou" is a bleak, mesmerizing rhapsody of family-destruction, defiantly uninterested in peddling Hollywood-style uplift. Lemmons doesn't pretend, and I won't either, that this movie is for everybody. But anyone who cares about ravishing film-making, superb acting and art willing to dive into the mystery of family's secrets will leave this dark drama both shaken and invigorated.This film simply works as a character study, pitilessly well observed and intimately familiar with its terrain. Mrs. Lemmons based her film on a previous short film she'd made. She describes the film as a semi-portrait of her own family. Although is it quite a heavy film, "Eve's Bayou" is far less dolorous than might be expected.