Eve's Bayou

Lemmons also does a stunning job of relaying a memory to us. She places the characters right back into the scene playing in their mind's eye. They narrate it as they witness it, blow by blow. But as we see, things aren't always what they appear to be.

[Lemmons's] creativity and the breadth of her vision more than make up for her occasional missteps, luring us into a family album of secrets and lies that keeps the audience groping along with this fine ensemble cast for the truths buried in murky waters.

An astonishingly accomplished first feature by Kasi Lemmons, this poetic and achingly perceptive film deserves a place on any number of year-end "best" lists.

The expressivity of the filmmaking doesn't quite measure up to the ideas and feelings that inspired Eve's Bavott. That said, this is still a wonderfully talented and intelligent film.

Actress Kasi Lemmons makes a self-assured directorial debut that illuminates the joys, hurts and mysteries of a girlhood set under the moss canopy of the Louisiana bayou. Newcomer Jurnee Smollett as Eve is the prize of the movie.

First-time director (and veteran actress) Kasi Lemmons captures shimmering images that project a kaleidoscope mastery of shifting, intricate moods, but it is her stunningly self-assured screenplay that represents an even more significant achievement.

In 1997, Roger Ebert named it the best film of the year. In 2018, the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry...and yet the film, which made back its cost nearly five times over, received zero Oscar nominations. Go figure.

Twenty-five years ago, Kasi Lemmons made her feature directorial debut with Eve’s Bayou, a steamy family drama as steeped in hidden dangers as its 1960s rural Louisiana setting, starring a who’s who of Black cinema.

Eve’s Bayou tells a painful story that is hard to recover from, especially for the family it impacted. Kasi Lemmons conceived, formulated, and accomplished a special film that would not be forgotten.

both complex and engaging, drawing us into the smoldering, simmering world of the Batiste family and their twisted dynamics without turning them into Gothic grotesquerie