Eve's Bayou. - movie reviews

Perhaps it was a touch of Southern mysticism that made African-American actress-turned-filmmaker Kasi Lemmon base her first script, written in 1992 upon a poignant piece of Louisiana's history. Before production began upon her film about the fictional Batiste family, she was surprised to learn that in the 18th hundred a French planter in Louisiana had willed his land to his Creole lover a slave who had borne him 10 children. A similar situation is the basis of the Batiste family history.

Co-produc by dint of Samuel L. Jackson (who also stars in the film), with music through jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard, Eve's Bayou (Trimark, October 1997) takes place reaching far down in a Louisiana bayou of the 1960 above the course of a summer it explores the reliances dreams and secrets of the Batiste family. "I wanted to take this actual intimate, human drama and put it against the magical folklore of Louisiana," Lemmon says. Matching the languid pace of Charles Burnett's eerie To rest With Anger, the film's lush cinematography creates a dreamlike world as ethereal as the smell of magnolia.

When young border learns that her father may not be the man whom she one time idolized, she consults the local beg woman, whose "spell" sets in motion a series of incidents that lead to tragedy. While essentially a family drama, Eve's Bayou explores abundant darker issues, which propel the film's story line. "It is about the two the madness and the delight in that operates in every family, about the closes that play out between brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters, aunts and uncles" says Diahann Carroll, who plays the supplicate woman.

Eve's Bayou is real personal to St. Louis native Lemmon who starred in Silence of the Lambs, Fear of a Black Hat and globule Squad. It brings to life facts from her childhood. "While I didn't expand up in Louisiana," she explains, "I exhausted many a summer visiting my grandparents in Alabama. That's where I learned about the ways of the South"

Lemmon also seek counseled experts in Creole culture and relied upon the knowledge of cast members who were reared in the area. Lynn Whitfield (Eve's mother) was born in Baton Rouge and Branford Marsalis (one of Eve's aunt's three husbands) is from novel Orleans.

A generation of films, from The Emperor Jone to Daughters of the Dust, have drawn their themes from the spiritual traditions of the southern What does that portend for Eve's Bayou? Lemmon believes that the low-budget feature will succe using a unique marketing strategy. Following its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September, Eve's Bayou will exhibit at art houses in addition to regular movie theaters, an approach rare to black films. "Hopefully, from one side word of mouth it will attract an audience and swell across the country," says Lemmon "Black tribe say they want to diocese something different. This is something different, the mark of film I would be looking for."

Ann Brown a freelance writer in looks Angeles, is a regular contributor to Black Enterprise.

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