EDEN
Broad Green Pictures
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
Screenwriter: Mia Hansen-Løve, Sven Hansen-Love
Cast: Felix de Gibry, Pauline Etienne, Vincent Macaigne, Roman Kolinka, Hugo Conzelmann, Zita Hanrot
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 6/2/15
Opens: June 19, 2015
When I was a teen during the 1950s there was no such thing as rock, folk, or acid rock. Ballads like “Because of You” dominated the pop scene. People danced to that and, believe it or not, parties in the fraternity house had to be chaperoned. Each decade brought new forms of music and, as the tradition of chaperones died out, so did folk music and, to an extent even rock gave way to electronic music. Even techno music was segmented. During the 1990s an running through the 2013, people in their twenties partied to the sounds of people I had never heard. I guess that’s one of the disadvantages of being alive, i.e. in one’s forties and fifties and beyond, yet being clueless about what’s popular with the millennials. If you’ve heard of Daft Punk, MK, Terry Hunter, Watanabe, Angie Stone and Joey Beltram, all of whom were “in” during the ‘90s, you’ve heard of six groups more than I have, at least until now when the movie “Eden” supplies a booming soundtrack listing forty-two such groups, mixed, matched, and raved largely in basements where DJs were kings and friends snorted, swallowed, and moved across the floor.
“Eden,” then, is loosely based on the career of Paul (Félix de Givry) who stands in for director Mia Hansen-Løve’s brother, a fellow who was in his glory during his twenties when techno music dominated the scene. This is a story about music, of course, but it also a tale of friendship. We watch as Paul is such a popular DJ that he is hired even for a gig in New York. He uses his fame and funding to found the Cheers club in Paris, continuing to be hot until he aged (oh, my, thirty-four years in 2013) and the music he grooved to began to die out, leaving him loaded with debt and with a drug problem from his decade or more usage of cocaine.
“Eden,” which made the rounds of some of the most prestigious film festivals such as Sundance Toronto and New York, is too loosely structured to be accommodated by a general audience, but should do well with the arthouse crowd. Paul and his friends would appear to have no cares outside of relationships that would come and go. But as the song goes, “Those were the days, my friend/ We thought the’d never end/ We thought they’d last forever and a day. By the time Paul celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday, he tried to subsist on odd jobs such as selling real estate, and notes with dismay that techno music no longer needs DJs: all you have to have now is a robotic individual to turn a computer on and off. No more mixing, no more life in the profession.
The script comes from the pens of director Mia Hansen-Løve and her depicted brother Sven, checking off incidents in Sven’s life (again, loosely based) such as his partnership with Stan (Hugo Conzelmann), a depressive poster-painter Cyvil (Roman Kolinka), and a bunch of girlfriends including the pixie-ish Louise (Pauline Étienne) and Julia (Greta Gerwig), the latter an American in Paris.
The overlong scenario lacks moments of bold excitement. Instead the story moves along, even losing momentum during the second half, which will end not in Hollywood fashion but in defeat as the music that Paul champions beings to die out (just as the movie “Eden” drones to a close during the final half hour).
Unrated. 131 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B-
Acting – B
Music – A-
Overall – B
