Amores divididos

The first time I saw this film I rated it 8; the 2nd time it got a 9. There is much visual beauty in the film: a lovely, serene setting and many gorgeous women. The film focussed on the devastation caused by a father who could not resist beautiful women even though he loved his family. As the film ended, I was left counting the number of people who would have considerable guilt to deal with but the end was, nevertheless, very satisfying.

This was a delightfully good movie. Set in the Louisiana bayou country in the 60's, it is a wonderful story of a well-to-do black family caught up in family tensions that drive the plot but never overpower the family's love for each other. Infidelity, an over-protective mother, the psychic aunt's tragic loss of loves and a delicious dose of voodoo all make this a good watch. The child actress, Jurnee Smollett as Eve, delivers a beautiful performance with talent far beyond her years. Debbie Morgan is terrific as the fortune-telling wise, but cursed-in -love Aunt Mozelle.

Lynn Whitfield and Samuel L. Jackson are also superb as the parents whose complex and troubled relationship's problems spill over onto the children, especially the two daughters, Eve and Cisely. Cisely sees herself as a buffer comforting her father and trying to protect him from her mother whom Cisely sees as a rival for her father's affections. Eve bounces around amidst the angst of being a middle child and the desire to understand the adults' world. This definitely a movie to see. It's a shame that jewels like this get overlooked in the usual Hollywood hype machine.

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.

The ghost of Tennessee Williams hover over "Eve's Bayou". The action takes place in a moss draped Louisiana backwater, and the family under observation (in their big gracious bayou house) is ripe with desires, disappointments, and the mysterious scent of sex as any in Mr. William's neighborhood. But the notable accomplishment of actress-writer Kasi Lemmons in her feature directorial debut is in creating a landscape quite beautiful and entirely her own - a fluid, feminine, African American, Southern gothic narrative that covers a tremendous amount of emotional territory with the lightest and most graceful of steps. The story belongs to young Eve Batiste. "The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old," a grown up Eve announced in a provocative prologue voice over. But the drama unfolds (in an unspecified bygone era when well to do woman wore gorgeous dresses to parties in their own homes) is far more shape shifting than such an audience grabbing statement can convey. Eve's father, Louis, is a suave, popular doctor and gentle family man who's also a womanizer - a flaw that bedevils Eve's graceful mother and especially torments Eve's older sister, Cisely, who adores her daddy more than she should. Eve, meanwhile worships her big sister. And in reaching out to support Cisely in a primal sexual struggle neither girl understand, Eve turns first to her father's sister Aunt Mozelle a vibrant, enigmatic woman infused with good-witch spiritual powers, and then to Elzora a voodoo priestess with potent bad witch abilities. Lemmons thus lays out big themes - the little seductions of fathers and daughters - the thick bond between sisters - the power of dark and light intentions in the material world. But she covers any traces of "heaviness" with shimmering, dream state visual elegance. And she makes up for any rough spots from the movie's younger actors with with a lovely score, and a great soundtrack of classic jazz and blues.

I had never heard of this film when my wife ordered it from NetFlix, and I keep wondering why. This is a terrific flick. Jurnee Smollett as Eve is truly excellent, and not just "good for a kid," or "good but annoyingly precocious," she is just plain good. The story is wonderful, and I love the fact that the race of the characters is hardly mentioned. It's a story about people, and it doesn't matter on what continent their ancestors originated. The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Samuel Jackson (one of the film industry's most versatile actors), and Debbi Morgan. Small parts portrayed by Branford Marsalis and Vondie Curtis Hall are very nicely done, and add color to the background of friends and relatives of the Batiste family. I enjoy the way the film shows us the world of psychic perception and Voodoo, and the degree to which belief in them can affect behavior. The location filming is wonderfully evocative of the steaming south, and the direction spot-on. I recommend this film.