Eve's Bayou

One of my very favorites "Eve's Bayou" and I take this one to the heart.

The double edge of the 10 of Swords, was icy quick to pierce and penetrate over and over from what once existed.. Love.

The tears, the affliction; The betrayal that lay at my feet as Louis Batiste. The wounded heart of a friend, and of a lover.



Difficult lessons about truth, love, friendship, mysticism, and fidelity, for better or worse.

A period film (and I do love period films;} filled with Southern Gothic drama. Somewhat similar to another favorite of mine, Tennessee Williams, a great Pulitzer Prize playwright of drama.

This too is a very powerful melodramatic film directed by Kasi Lemmons with mysticism & betrayal as thick as the bayou moss along with a phenomenal cast as well!


The Louisiana Bayou heats up one explosive summer in 1962 for the Batiste Family, as they try to survive the secrets and the betrayals kept.

Louis Batiste, Patriarch, protector, provider and good father, is a highly respected doctor in his community.

A man known to "fix things," is charming, sophisticated, prosperous, AND... a weakness for attractive women. Hmmmm......I "did" fit snug in that last category, and like Louis, "let them be taken or not."

The heat starts rising, getting intense at the Batiste Family residence. They throw party, kick up their heels through the night, while Louis Batiste dancing intimately with married, Matty Mereaux.

Finally the warmth of the heat, the excitement of intimacy becomes too hot for Louis & Matty. They take a stroll, (without being noticed) to the carriage house and become inflamed with one another's desires.

Eve had fled the party earlier, hurt from her father's choice to dance with her older sister Cisely first.

Eve finds a cozy spot in the carriage house, falls fast asleep without being missed.

Knocking over a bottle of wine, entwined in sexual lust, Louis & Matty are 'caught in the act.' Eve, who is not only startled, but highly upset to see the two in their clandestine embrace.

Louis excuses Matty so he can have alone time with his daughter to try and 'whitewash' his infidelity, convincingly, to him anyways.

Still...Eve is left with doubt and in an attempt to drown them of what she saw in the carriage house, she turns to her older sister for understanding.

Cisely, is terribly fond of her father;caught between being a girl and a woman along with the emotional changes that accompany it.

She convinces Eve that she was "mistaken," although in her own heart, Cisely believes Eve.

I suppose Cisely is like the disavowal wife, or partner; letting denial replace love, the last thing left before letting "go" of a unrequited relationship.

And all the tears, all the regrets, just couldn't and eventually wouldn't justify the elusive truth. It is what it is---

I also mentioned that this movie has mystic and voodoo involved as Eve's Aunt Mozelle is a known psychic and black widow who loses husbands to fate, as quick as she marrys them.

Although not able to predict her own destiny she is true to her calling and at last, sees her brother Louis's demise in one of her visions, thinking it was Eve's death she saw.


Not realizing herself, Eve too is touched with the 'supernatural' and spends a lot of time with her Aunt, as Mozelle lets her niece watch her counsel clients.

The Voodoo comes to play as Eve becomes angry with her father when Cisely tells her a half truth about an incident between father & daughter.

Eve takes it upon herself to rectify the situation by heading out to The River Market filled with vendors and such.

While looking for someone who practices witchcraft, Matty Mereaux's husband, Lenny spies Eve and catches her off guard.

He startles Eve, laughs and the two have a little chat asking about one another's family.

Eve decides to put a "bee in Lenny's bonnet" and starts to inquire about Matty's habits while he is "gone away teaching in New Orleans.

They converse:

Thats a long drive," she says. He replies: "Yeah... Well...sometimes when the weather is bad I stay over on campus but usually I try to get home so Matty dont get so lonely."

Eve replies back, "Matty dont look the lonely type." Lenny is alittle thrown off or embarrassed, shrugs & says, " Yeah...I guess not."

She continues, "You must get home real late...so does my Daddy every night. My mama gets real lonely, but then she's the lonely type. "Not like Daddy and Matty..."
And with that she leaves Lenny Mereaux, awkward, confused, and wondering......

On her way again she finds what she is looking for. The Voodoo Priestess "Elzora" portrayed by Diahann Carroll, (I love it! ), whom she had encountered earlier in her first escapade to the Market when caught stealing a pineapple.

Eve approaches her, Elzora says, "I remember you pineapple thief." Embarrassed by the comment of her guilt, Eve continues to tell Elzora, she's been looking for her.

Elzora says the only people that look for her have good reason. Eve replies that she has good reason and money---$20 dollars.

Disbelieving, Elzora asks to see the money, and Eve shows her. The Voodoo Priestess snatches it from Eve, they then go to Elzora's house to "discuss business."

Eve tells Elzora that she wants to hex someone because they have hurt a family member. Elzora suggest a spell for protection, but Eve is adamant and insists she "WANTS HIM DEAD!!!"

Elzora cautions her and says, "People have a way of dying on their own speed."

Nevertheless, Eve ignores the warning, and gives her some hair from her father's comb.

Elzora grants Eve request. Eve leaves to come back later thinking the Voodoo Priestess is going to "make her a voodoo doll."

When Eve goes back, Elzora asks: "Is he dead yet?..." "He should be."
Eve replies, "How can he be?" "You never gave me the doll."

Confused as well, Elzora tells her she didn't make a doll. She made her a wax coffin; put his hair in the mouth of the snake and buried it in the Batiste family plot.


Upset and confused, wanting a doll so she could control the hex, Eve is now worried about her father and senses some kind of danger for him.

She runs from Elzora's and follows the train tracks to 'Kings' a bar where Louis drinks and hangs out with his surreptitious lovers.

Eve finds him there in close encounters with Matty Mereaux, drinking. Eve begs her Dad to leave with her, Louis agrees and asks Eve to wait outside for a minute.

While outside, Eve hears the train, looks towards the railroad and sees the shadowy figure of a man walking intensely up the tracks in her direction.

As the man gets closer she realizes it is Lenny Mereaux!

Eve tries to distract him but he is oblivious to her; walks past and directly into the bar where he sees Louis, caressing Matty's face.

Lenny grabs his wife from Louis's presence and precedes to ask Louis if he is, "Fucking his wife."

Louis & Matty both deny the remark and Lenny then says to Louis, "I trusted you Louis and you been fucking Matty."

"I loved you Louis..." he says in a cracked hurt voice. Then he threatens Louis that if he ever speaks to his wife again he will kill him.

I suppose it was Louis's ego and the drink that got the best of him, so he blatantly says goodbye to Matty, disregarding Lenny Mereaux's warning.

Well enough said-- Lenny stops--- pulls his gun out from his belt--Matty screams-- Louis turns around and sees and pushes Eve out of harms danger... Then Lenny shoots twice.

Louis falls as the train passes and the red neon lights from the Kings Bar Sign reflects on Louis's dead body.

Mozelle's premonition, whether it be destiny or karma, no more is the paradoxical truth evasive.

I liked this analogy very much it stood out more than any other.
The director did not have to show a blood splattered body befallen on the ground. Instead she used the "neon lights" that projected the obvious truth, and betrayal of a violent ending.

As with the card the 10 of swords depicting its victim stabbed and bleeding to death. A grave misfortune culminating in a disaster.


At the cemetery Cisely is uncontrollably upset; guilt from her half truth and the love for a father she so admired.

Eve crying as well, suddenly looks up and sees Elzora or thinks she does at the family plot and is left wondering, "If indeed, she killed her father with voodoo."


It could have been a little of both. But I have to believe as it is said, "Sometimes a solider falls on his own sword."

For whatever reasons people are motivated to keep things secret, mostly because they're afraid to cause pain. Or...The affairs are an addiction that serves as an excuse to fall in love with themselves over and over again.

But as this Doctor of Medicine so forgot in his mission to cure everyone he loved, the law of the Soul Doctor: "Physician, heal thyself first."

"Life is filled with goodbyes, a million goodbyes and it hurts everytime."


And so it is~LJS