Suggested to me by a patron who very much emphasized its Twin Peaks connections, Kasi Lemmons' 1997 debut feature Eve's Bayou yields more discussion of that aspect than most of my other podcast episodes (aside from the designated Twin Peaks Cinema series). My coverage includes a non-spoiler and spoiler section so I won't get too much into the details here, but the way this film deals with memory and perspective, family ties and hidden secrets, passionate betrayal and murderous revenge, makes for an interesting companion with my favorite series. In fact, there are aspects I didn't even dig into - for example, both taking place in a tightknit community and playing with psychic premonitions - which only speaks to the power of their overlap. The story of an affluent family in rural Louisiana, Eve's Bayou is told through the eyes of ten-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett), who idolizes her charismatic father Dr. Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) but is troubled to discover he is cheating on her mother. From there, her world begins to unravel even as the great joys and quiet pleasures of her everyday life are on full display in Lemmons' evocative direction. Drawing particularly on the analysis of a video essay which I discovered just before recording, I was struck by the subtle ways the film (with the help of some deleted scenes) hints at a truth beneath its various points of view, even as it allows them to remain in tension. Meanwhile, the film's mournful sense of its characters' mortality (including an aunt, played by Debbi Morgan, who grieves three deceased partners and worries about taking on another) is echoed by the theme of an advance work-in-progress I shared with all tiers this month.
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