Eve's Bayou

"The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old," begins this remarkable Louisiana-set drama, the highly promising debut of writer/director Kasi Lemmons. The hero/antihero is Dr Batiste (Samuel L Jackson), a loving father and womanising local physician who, one summer night in 1962, is not discreet enough in his philandering. An apparent tryst between him and a local married woman is witnessed by his youngest child, Eve, and sets off a tragic chain of events. Jackson is a charismatic presence, but the focus is on the women of the family, and Lemmons's impressive screenplay and direction allow her female cast to shine. Domestic tensions mount, but recollections play false in this Tennessee Williams-style story in which atmosphere is as important as drama, and as revealing.