Eve's Bayou

In 1950s Louisiana, Eve, the ten-year-old daughter of a well-off Black family, sees her father one night with another woman. Her father is the beloved doctor of the town. She tells her older sister what she saw, and the two girls' accounts do not match. The film is not interested in adultery. It is interested in the unreliability of memory: its opening line says so outright, that the story Eve tells of the summer she killed her father is not the only truth. When the same scene is remembered differently, who is right becomes unclear. The form is Southern gothic: swamp, heat, family dinners, fortune telling and dreams. It never explains its supernatural side and leaves the audience in that uncertainty too. It is Kasi Lemmons' first film as director. It became one of the highest-earning independent releases of 1997, taking several times its cost, and Roger Ebert named it the best film of the year. It received no Oscar nominations. It was later added to the National Film Registry. Jurnee Smollett plays Eve, Samuel L. Jackson the father and Debbi Morgan the aunt. Who it is for: viewers who like Southern gothic and family drama told from a child's view. Who it is not for: anyone after clear answers. The film keeps who did what deliberately vague, and some will find the ending incomplete.