Kasi Lemmons was already familiar to anyone interested in the kinds of film we cover on EOFFTV by the time she made her directorial debut with this remarkable magic realist fable. She’d had a small role in Vampire’s Kiss (1989), been Jodie Foster’s friend in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and had a more substantial role in Candyman (1992). That her directing debut, a Southern gothic family drama with lashings of supernatural happenings, has fallen into a sort of obscurity is shocking – it’s not only one of the most assured directorial debuts you could ever hope to see but a beautifully shot, fantastically acted and often very moving film that deserves to be far better known.

Eve’s Bayou opens with an arresting opening line: “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old.” The voice (Tamara Tunie) is that of the now grown up (and never seen) Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett), an initially carefree young girl trying to navigate the increasingly complex and terrifying world of adults in early 1960s Louisiana. Her family, mother Roz (Lynn Whitfield), doctor father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson), younger brother Poe (Jake Smollett) and older sister Cisely (Meagan Good) live in a degree of luxury in the eponymous Eve’s Bayou, a town founded by a French aristocrat who was Louis’ relative and after which Eve is named. After catching her beloved father apparently having sex with the married Matty Mereaux (Lisa Nicole Carson) in the coach house (she’s persuaded by Cisely, who’s relationship with her father is later revealed by extremely unhealthy, that she saw something different) Eve finds her hitherto simple and happy life starting to unravel.

When Roz and her sister Mozelle (Debbi Morgan), a psychic counsellor haunted by the ghosts of the three husbands who died on her, visit local voodoo priestess Elzora and is warned that one of the children will be involved in a traffic accident, Roz refuses to let then out of the house that summer. As Cisely reaches puberty and starts to rebel against her family she’s involved in a highly inappropriate kiss with her father that caused an enraged Eve to see help from Elzora (Diahann Carroll). But the incident is again not what it seems and Eve learns too late that Elzora has placed a curse on Louis. But is it for real – and will it work?

Much feted with awards at the time of its release and praised by most of the critics, Eve’s Bayou started to get some of the recognition it was due when it was selected by Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Film Registry in 2018. As haunting as it is moving, it’s a fully immersive film that grips from that marvellous opening line and never let’s go.

The supernatural – the curses, premonitions and ghosts – impinges of the family and others with little fuss or fanfare. No-one questions Mozelle’s psychic abilities (though Louis – a doctor and therefore rooted in the sciences rather than the supernatural – suggests that she’d once been in a psychiatric hospital) and when the time comes for revenge on her father, Eve’s first thought is to turn to the town’s witch. This is a world where the magical and the supernatural are just a part of everyday life. By the end it’s revealed that Eve has inherited the gift of “sight” from her aunt and seems completely unfazed by it. It’s never treated as anything to particularly afraid of – if anything it’s the fallibility of human perception and memory that’s the real “villain” here – “the truth changes colour according to the light,” the narrator cautions us.

By not grandstanding the more outré elements of the plot, Lemmons has room to explore the real core of the film, the fractious relationships withing the Batiste family. It’s all done in shades of grey – Louis is a womaniser but he’s not evil. Even the suggestion that he may have behaved improperly towards Cisely is later revealed to have been something rather different than we first believed, itself opening a can of worms that most film-makers wouldn’t have gone anywhere near. The family has its problems but there’s also clearly a lot of love here, albeit imprecisely expressed.

Although it’s an ensemble piece, beautifully performed by all involved – Jurnee Smollett in particular is a revelation, one of the most compelling child performers ever who went on to a successful grown up career – it’s the women who really get to shine here in the sort of roles they’d probably have been denied elsewhere. Lynn Whitfield impresses as the frazzled mother, bottling up her resentment towards the man she still loves deeply for his constant betrayals and Debbi Morgan is fantastic as the tragic and haunted (literally) Mozelle.

Diahann Carroll isn’t in the film all that much but makes the most of her role as the morally ambiguous Elzora whose magic may or may not be real – it’s never really clear if she did place a curse on Louis or whether his ultimate fate is just down to blind luck. Louis, another great turn from Samuel L. Jackson, the only male character given much screen time, drifts around the edges of the story, causing all the problems, but for all his many faults, he is at heart a loving family man – he clearly adores his children and is proud of his position as a popular doctor (a position he frequently abuses) but despite his reputation as “a man who can fix things” seems crushingly aware that the only thing he can’t fix is his own family.

Eve’s Bayou was as good a calling card for Lemmons the director as anyone could have hoped for. Her script bristles with memorable dialogue, her direction is confident and note-perfect and she’s ably assisted by Amy Vincent’s gorgeous, atmospheric photography. To help raise funding and persuade backers that she had what it took to be a director, she shot the short films, Dr Hugo in 1996 which featured a minor character from Eve’s Bayou played by Lemmons’ husband Vondie Curtis-Hall (Lemmons described the short as “an illumination” of Eve’s Bayou). She’s directed many films since but few have been as memorable, haunting and affecting as her debut.