Despite scientific evidence that a person’s memory is erroneous and unreliable, a person tends to cling to his memories with a fierce and iron grip. The opening scene of Eve’s Bayou is one of the most gripping intros I’ve ever seen: “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old” (Eve’s Bayou, 2021). These words characterize the film most fully; it becomes clear that this is not a simple story. To understand what happened that summer, the film takes the viewer into the small but vibrant world of the young heroine, who tried to comprehend what is happening in her good, but inherently problematic family. Eve’s Bayou is a breathtaking drama of love, hate, guilt, and sadness that is harder and more powerful than expected. A thrilling and unsettling film explores the issue of parental mistakes, the occasional cruelty between siblings, and the benefits our minds give us when we remember things differently from what they were.
The events unfold in the early 1960s in Louisiana, in a large old mansion surrounded by rivers and swamps. The story is told from the perspective of the main character – Eva Batiste, in whose image Jurnee Smollett-Bell has incredibly accurately and indeed got used to. Her father – Louis, a depraved and perceptive man, works as a doctor, and her mother – Roz, is described as a woman of extraordinary beauty. In the Batiste family, in addition to Eva, there is also her younger brother Po, who was doted by mom, and Louis’s favorite, Cisely, the eldest of the children. One of the main characters is Eve’s aunt Moselle, who has a unique gift for foreseeing the life events of many people, except for her own.
The problem of parent-child relations is one of the central ones in the film. Since there are significant disagreements between the spouses against Louis’s betrayal, the head of the family shows increased attention as a man to his eldest daughter Cisely, played by Meagan Good. According to Luckett (2019), Louis wants to be adored despite his abusive behavior, and he teaches his daughter to do what her mother does not do – even to the extent of consoling him with sexual favors. In turn, Roz uses her son Poe, played by Jake Smollett, to get the attention of a man she doesn’t get from her husband, who deceives other women and only cares about his eldest daughter. The scene at the party, when the parents pay attention to all the children except Eve, allows the viewer to feel how the main character feels flawed in comparison with her brother and sister.
The critical instant of the film is the scene when Eve catches her father with another woman. Louis is a man who loves to enjoy the attention of women. He often provokes his wife, who most likely knows for sure about her husband’s disloyalty but diligently pretends not to suspect about it. During the party, Eva witnesses her father’s betrayal and finds him with another woman. Stunned by what she saw, the girl experiences a panic attack, and the idea of family well-being disappears. This moment opens the eyes of all family members and leads to a change in the emotional atmosphere in the home. Knippel (2020) asserts that it seems as if the family were in a dream, and a loud cosmic snap of their fingers woke them up. The imperturbable Louis becomes bolder about his reckless actions. Roz, after years of inaction, finally confronts Louis angrily over his behavior. As the story unfolds, viewers witness Eve’s mental and spiritual changes. After her father’s betrayal, her little harmonious world is shattered into thousands of fragments. Thus, the life of every member of the Batiste family changes radically.
The personal drama of Cisely, who experienced sexual harassment from her father, deserves special attention. Louis replaced his wife with his daughter, cultivating hatred and resentment towards the mother in his childhood. Luckett (2019) claims that Louis created an ideal and loving wife from his daughter; he formed from Cisely the woman he wanted to see in Roz. The heroine was a bewildered young girl of puberty who was unfairly involved in her parents’ disagreements. Swallowed up by feelings of guilt, shame, and confusion, Cisely has no one to turn to for help: Roz cannot open her eyes and accept the truth, and Eve is still too young to understand this problem. According to Luckett (2019), Cisely does what most rape victims do: she is silent and does not speak to anyone. Thus, the film reveals the theme of domestic violence, when both parents use physical force against the child, the father rapes the daughter, and the mother does not use any action to avoid it and punish the culprit.
Despite her young age, Eva is the only person who tries to understand Cisely’s pain. The elder sister describes Louis’s actions, and Eve decides that her father should die. This decision is the point of no return, which triggers a series of irreversible events. Eva tells Lenny about his wife’s infidelity with her father, whom the man treats like a family member. Louis’s life ends with a shot from an offended Lenny. Cisely experiences even greater torment; she is confused because, on the one hand, she hates her rapist, but on the other, she feels young love for him and blames herself for hating her father.
The image of Louis is controversial, so that this character can evoke different feelings for each viewer. On the one hand, he is a liar who manipulated everyone around him and subjected his family to mental and physical violence. On the other hand, Baker (2020) notes that many people believe that he is innocent and does not deserve to die, while Cisely is to blame for her actions for not resisting Louis and putting his needs ahead of her own. Nevertheless, in my opinion, Louis was a rapist who manipulated women in his family even after death, when in a letter to his sister, he justified himself that he confused his daughter with his wife.
Therefore, instead of simply explaining what exactly happened between Cisely and Louis on that ill-fated night, the film shows how this brief but destructive moment can be viewed and interpreted in different ways from two perspectives. One aspect is for sure: this scene leads to irreversible consequences and hurts all the characters. Each actor was able to accurately express his or her hero’s feelings and convinced the viewer to believe him.
Works Cited
Baker, Christina. Kasi Lemmons: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
“Eve’s Bayou”Scripts. 2021.
Knippel, Jessica. “Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema,” Journal of Religion & Film, vol. 24, no. 2, 2020, pp. 1–5.
Luckett, Josslyn. “The Daughters Debt: How Black Spirituality and Politics are Transforming the Televisual Landscape,” Film Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 4. 2019, pp. 9–17.