For whatever reason I never saw Eve's Bayou when it came out in '97. Nor have I in the almost twenty years since. Until now.
As you might guess from the title, it's set in Louisiana, apparently sometime in the fifties. The middle child Eve narrates as an adult. She remembers her father vividly, perhaps a little too charming to be good. Samuel L. Jackson gives one of his very best performances. The cast in general is first rate.
Eve's Bayou looks like a movie. In point of fact it looks like a movie from the time when it's sent. Of course there's some content that wouldn't have made it at that time, and Hollywood wasn't making movies about Creole populations in the postwar years. (Nor are they now.) But in terms of framing, saturated colors, and the musical score, it feels like a work of classic Hollywood. That's part of the subject, I think. Memories of the past are a show, and an unreliable one at that.
As you might guess from the title, it's set in Louisiana, apparently sometime in the fifties. The middle child Eve narrates as an adult. She remembers her father vividly, perhaps a little too charming to be good. Samuel L. Jackson gives one of his very best performances. The cast in general is first rate.
Eve's Bayou looks like a movie. In point of fact it looks like a movie from the time when it's sent. Of course there's some content that wouldn't have made it at that time, and Hollywood wasn't making movies about Creole populations in the postwar years. (Nor are they now.) But in terms of framing, saturated colors, and the musical score, it feels like a work of classic Hollywood. That's part of the subject, I think. Memories of the past are a show, and an unreliable one at that.
2 comments:
we saw this a while back, my only lasting memory being diahann carroll's appropriately disturbing swamp witch. possibly the most nuanced role of samuel jackson's mind-bogglingly prolific career (tho that's not actually saying much, i guess, nuance never really having been his thing). a strange, sad movie, from a time, as you say, that seems so much longer ago than it actually was...
&, speaking of 'long ago', we recently watched 'age of innocence', a stellar example of that particular genre commonly known by the name 'chick flick', which we both enjoyed (wynona ryder being particularly good). kind of an interesting bookend to scorcese's other, better remembered period piece, 'gangs of new york', which he made years later (& which also featured daniel day lewis)...
I like that footage from Black Snake Moan. Don't know if Jackson's actually playing there but he makes a credible bluesman. As for Carroll, I had no background on her, so when I saw this movie I initially thought she was Eartha Kitt. She definitely made an impression on me, though.
I haven't seen The Age of Innocence. The last time I remember seeing Ryder was in A Scanner, Darkly. She was very good in that, although overshadowed by both Robert Downey and the animation (which is more like freehand painting over live action.)
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