"Eve's Bayou" Members and Guests only. IFC
Set amid the picturesque Louisiana swamps in 1962, Kasi Lemmons's family drama can be viewed from several different angles - as the latest in the recent wave of films about the lives of middle-class, black Americans, as a modern re-working of the Southern gothic genre, or as a classical "women's film" in a line stretching back to George Cukor. Eve's Bayou is all of these, but writer-director Lemmons also shows a distinctive voice and eye which compensates for the occasional longueurs in her beautifully-made but over-extended debut.
Told through the eyes of 10-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett), Lemmons's film takes place over the course of a year in the life of the well-to-do Batiste family - Eve's jealousy of the closeness between her older sister Cisely (Meagan Good) and her father Louis (Samuel L Jackson) becomes more fraught when she spies Louis philandering with a neighbour. She becomes close to her aunt (Debbi Morgan), a "cursed" woman (she has married three men, all of whom died) who possesses psychic powers. As Jackson's behaviour becomes more and more unacceptable to his wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield), the family starts to implode under the tensions. A potentially heady brew of magic, jealousy and sexual awakening, Eve's Bayou is a beautifully-crafted, richly visual film, with strong performances from all its principal cast members, especially from young Smollett. Lemmons avoids the temptation to tip her story over into pure melodrama, opting instead for a restraint which mirrors the comfortable respectability of the Batiste's lives. At times the film's lushness threatens to become mere prettiness - Louisiana has probably never before looked so well-manicured on film - but there's a cinematic intelligence at work here which subtly shifts focus at unexpected moments, creating a believably multi-layered portrait of a troubled family.
"Psycho", Members and Guests IFC
Great claims have been made for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho on its re-release, as marking the cinematic beginning of the 1960s and a brasher, more cynical way of looking at the world. It certainly marked a change of direction for Hitchcock after the lush psychodramas of the 1950s, and it now seems a pity that he didn't further explore the "cheap" aesthetic forced by circumstances on him in its making. Psycho hit viewers like a bucket of cold water in the face in 1960, but one wonders how effective the shock tactics will be for a modern cinema audience, and whether some of its flaws will become more apparent. Has any other great film had such a ridiculous epilogue, for example? The world has thrown up its hands in horror at the news that Gus Van Sant is directing a shot-by-shot remake, but many films since (most notably Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull) have already used the shower scene as a blueprint. In this sense, the director's own description of the film as "pure cinema" is justified, but it leaves one wondering whether, shorn of its surprise factor, the film can still chill on the big screen, or just become an interesting text. As it's one of two films released this week without a press preview, this writer can only vouch for its effect on videotape, which isn't the same thing.
. The Avengers will be reviewed in the review column in tomorrow's Irish Times.
