Eve's Bayou, the filmmaking debut of character actress Kasi Lemmons, has all the trappings of a classic. The scenario calls to mind Southern coming-of-age novels by the likes of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Harper Lee. Terrance Blanchard's haunting score echoes the emotional sweep of Hollywood's golden age. The acting--particularly by Jurnee Smollett as Eve, Debbi Morgan as fortune-telling Aunt Mozelle, and Samuel L. Jackson as likable bastard Dr. Louis Batiste--is strikingly nuanced.

That the film does not quite achieve classic status is due mainly to Lemmons' own script, which overemphasizes long speeches at the expense of more telling conversational give-and-take. Eve's Bayou is, on the whole, a little too blatant about its themes. As such, it's on the level of a Hallmark Hall of Fame special, albeit an exceptionally good one.

The story opens at a party, where Eve is once again blocked from her father's attention by her more graceful, Shakespeare-quoting older sister. She retreats to the garage to wallow in self-pity, and there she spies her father enjoying a quickie with a voluptuous family friend. The doctor downplays the awkward moment by striking a unspoken deal with his daughter--he'll spend more time with her in exchange for her silence.

Soon after that fateful evening, Aunt Mozelle has a vision--someone is going to be struck by a rapidly moving vehicle. Her sister-in-law reacts by grounding her three children for the summer. Cooped up in the house all day and all night, the sibling rivalries threaten to reach a melting point, especially since Daddy seems to be coming home later and later, and the whole family falls apart without him. Finally, a stormy evening of family arguments--and one shady, ambiguous encounter between Cisely and her father--leads Eve to concoct an unsteady black-magic plan of revenge.

Eve's Bayou is enjoyably episodic, with fascinating digressions into the romantic history of Aunt Mozelle and into the wisdom of Eve's Creole grandmother, whose warnings about overindulging the whims of children turn out to be truer than she imagined. For a long stretch, the movie is merely a well-observed character study, centered mainly on the fascinating Dr. Batiste, a well-loved provider whose powers as a giver of life nurture a self-destructive arrogance.

But the film builds slowly to a true emotional crescendo, and a final voice-over speech by an adult Eve gives the movie broader, jaw-dropping implications. It snaps the story's puzzle pieces together but leaves the final picture open to several interpretations.