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 Film critics and Hollywood producers don’t spend a lot of time sweating over the question of what kind of movies white people want to see, because American caucasians aren’t seen as a monolithic audience. But every time an African-American filmmaker produces a piece of work that steps outside the boundaries of gangbangin’ or comedy, the success or failure of that work is seen as a referendum on the tastes and desires of African-American moviegoers.
That perception was heightened in the summer of 2000, as broad laughfests like Eddy Murphy’s Nutty Professor II: The Klumps and Martin Lawrence’s Big Mama’s House racked up huge box office. And the Spike Lee documentary about a single show by four leading African American comics, The Original Kings of Comedy, also did huge business. By contrast, Lee’s 1996 film about The Million Man March, Get On The Bus, sank quickly. If Spike Lee, the foremost African American filmmaker, can’t succeed with a serious story, then who can? That question, of course, is too simple, ignoring as it does the considerations of marketing and promotion that are key to ginning up enthusiasm for most films. A far better movie than Get On The Bus, Charles Burnett’s extraordinary domestic drama To Sleep With Anger, also quickly vanished in 1990, despite excellent reviews and a powerful cast, led by Danny Glover. What the Lee and Burnett films had in common were fragmentary advertising and publicity efforts, which all but dooms any movie in today’s market, where you live and die by the first weekend’s box office. “All but,” perhaps, but not “always.” While it wasn’t a smash hit of Eddie Murphyish proportions, Eve’s Bayou, a 1997 release, did solid business purely on word of mouth, drawing theatergoers simply because people of all colors started telling one another that this was a powerful piece of storytelling. Eve’s Bayou was also the feature film debut of that rarest type of director--an African American woman. Kasi Lemmons, who also scripted, made her name as a performer in films as disparate as Silence of the Lambs and the rap music parody, Fear Of a Black Hat. Stepping behind the camera, she showed a remarkably sure hand for a beginning director. And as a screenwriter, Lemmons took an innovative approach to family drama, adding elements of voodoo and fortunetelling for an exotic twist. Her setting is a place American writers of all types love to head for--the bayous of Louisiana. With their eerie, lush landscape and racial and linguistic jambalaya, the bayous seem like a foreign land in the heart of the U.S. They are certainly the only place where you’ll find a family like the Batistes--African Americans whose slave ancestor Eve saved the life of a Frenchman with her folk medicines. In gratitude, the Frenchman gave Eve her freedom, rich bayou property, and his hand in marriage. Now, generations later in the 1950s, the Batistes are black aristocrats with a spacious home and a patriarch, Louis (Samuel Jackson), whose profession as a doctor elevates him even higher in the eyes of the African-American community--especially the women of that community. For despite having a beautiful, sophisticated wife named Roz (Lynn Whitfield) who loves him, Doctor Batiste ministers to his female patients in a highly personal manner. As his two adoring daughters, Eve (Jurnee Smollett, as the namesake of that long ago slave) and Cisely (Meagan Good) become increasingly aware of this flaw in their father’s character, tensions in the family build, especially for the pubescent Cisely, daddy’s favorite. Simultaneously, Eve’s Bayou tracks the fortunes and misfortunes of Louis Batiste’s sister Mozelle (Debbi Morgan) who has inherited the original Eve’s gift of second sight. Like her brother, she has a special healing role in the community, as the lost and desperate come to her for answers about life and love. Mozelle’s had enough heartache about love to be an expert--she’s three times a widow. So when the handsome, artistic Julian Grayraven (Vondie Curtis Hall, Kasi Lemmons’ husband) comes into her life, she’s terrified that she’ll again lose a man she loves. As Louis and Mozelle arc toward their very different fates, Lemmons introduces an element to the plotline that makes Eve’s Bayou a bit too overheated. It’s also one the savvy viewer will see coming from a long way off. But her cast is strong enough to overcome this flaw. The two young girls who carry so much of the film, Jurnee Smollett and Meagan Good, are mature, sensitive actors who catch all the nuances of sibling love and rivalry. Samuel Jackson and Lynn Whitfield do excellent work, but the revelation, among the adult players, is Debbi Morgan. Known mostly for her work in “daytime dramas,” Morgan’s Mozelle is sensual, ferocious, caring, and maybe a little nuts. It’s a juicy part, requiring a performance that stays just this side of overacting, and Morgan walks the tightrope beautifully. The casting of Diahann Carroll as Elzora, a voodoo seer and Mozelle’s professional rival, is more problematic. Even with white face paint, a fright wig and rags for clothes, Carroll is too naturally elegant to be messing around in graveyards at midnight. But perhaps her visits did conjure up the reasonable amount of box office good luck that Eve’s Bayou enjoyed. However, three years have past and Kasi Lemmon’s has yet to release a second directing effort. After viewing this extraordinarily affecting movie on video, you may want to cast your own curse on Hollywood’s decision makers. |
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