Eve's Bayou [Blu-ray] [Criterion Collection]

Director: Kasi Lemmons Kasi Lemmons

Overview

"Black female writer-director Kasi Lemmons made her feature directorial debut with this period family drama set in the South. Depicting the the African-American experience with a female slant, Lemmons shunned the usual urban violence and race issues of black films for a different approach, a jambalaya of Southern gentility, bayou traditions, and voodoo visions. The Southern Gothic saga pivots around a prosperous Creole family in Louisiana during the year 1962 -- as seen through the eyes of intensely curious, precocious, and perceptive ten-year-old Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett). Eve's coming-of-age events are introduced through her adult voiceover narration (Tamara Tunie), which begins, ""Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old."" Her father, Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson), is the area's much-respected doctor, and the proud and beautiful Roz (Lynn Whitfield) is Eve's mother. But Louis has an eye for other women, and after Eve catches him in the barn with an attractive, married woman, Matty Mereaux (Lisa Nicole Carson), he must reassure the child that he still loves her mother. Nevertheless, Eve is shaken by what she has seen, and she tells her older sister Cisely (Meagan Good). Eve's impulsive Aunt Mozelle (Debbi Morgan), a sexy, superstitious widow with three past husbands, has taken on a new lover, Julian Grayraven (Vondie Curtis Hall). Finding her beliefs in family loyalty crumbling, the young girl visits voodoo priestess Elzora (Diahann Carroll). A Pandora's box of long-buried Batiste clan secrets has been opened beneath the shade of the magnolia trees, and Eve struggles through the summer to save her family. Filmed on location by cinematographer Amy Vincent. Actor Vondie Curtis Hall is the husband of director Lemmons. Shown at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals."

Product Details

Release Date:	10/25/2022
UPC:	0715515277914
Original Release:	1997
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:55:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Meagan Good	Cisely Batiste
Samuel L. Jackson	Louis Batiste
Lynn Whitfield	Roz Batiste
Debbi Morgan	Mozelle Batiste Delacroix
Jake Smollett	Poe Baptiste
Ethel Ayler	Gran Mere
Diahann Carroll	Elzora
Vondie Curtis-Hall	Julian Grayraven
Lisa Nicole Carson	Matty Mereaux
Tamara Tunie	Narrator
Roger Guenveur Smith	Lenny Mereaux
Branford Marsalis	Harry Delacroix
Afonda Colbert	Henrietta
Lola Dalferes	Lynette
Marcus Lyle Brown	Hosea
Alverta Perkins Dunigan	Paige
Ron Flagge	Vendor
Sharon K. London	Hilary
Carol Sutton	Madame Renard
Victoria Rowell	Stevie Hobbs
Oneal A. Isaac	Bus Driver
Julian Dalcour	Bartender
Leonard Thomas	Maynard
Allen Toussaint	Proprietor
Billie Neal	Ghost of Original Eve
Jurnee Smollett-Bell	Eve Batiste
Terence Blanchard	Composer

Technical Credits

Kasi Lemmons

Kasi Lemmons	Director,Screenwriter
Caldecot Chubb	Producer
Samuel L. Jackson	Producer
Jaki Brown-Karman	Casting
Robyn M. Mitchell	Casting
Eli Selden	Executive Producer
Julie Silverman Yourn	Executive Producer
Nick Wechsler	Executive Producer
Michael Bennett	Executive Producer
Margaret Matheson	Executive Producer
Benjamin Patrick	Sound/Sound Designer