Eve's Bayou is a lost gem about a black Louisiana family during one explosively eventful summer, although most of the characters don't seem to consider it anything but typical. The film starts off with a voice-over narration in which the main character, 10-year-old Eve Batiste, tells us that this was the summer she killed her father. With masterful direction, Kasi Lemmons draws us ever closer into the lives of this family: their problems, their triumphs, and their love for each other. The best parts about this movie were the cinematography, the dialogue, and the sheer power of emotions. The bayou is filled with astonishing beauty, the words are wonderfully written, and there are three powerful scenes that truly hit me when I saw them.Despite all that, the movie has its flaws. I absolutely hated the child acting. The fact that the children were at the center of so much emotional turmoil only made the poor acting more pointedly obvious. The acting by the rest of the cast was fantastic, but the two main protagonists being as awful as they were really lowered my opinion of the piece. The story got off to a wobbly start, although it turned out to be exceptional in the end. Also, there were several scenes that I felt really had no point. At all. I literally asked myself after one of them, Why was that there? and realized there was no answer. Then I laughed at it. I also laughed at some of the bad acting. I'm not perfect, so sue me, but this is an excellent movie that I very much recommend.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119080/