Mia Hansen-Love's fourth feature film, Eden, is her most grandiose effort yet, telling a story that spans over twenty years. Eden is centered around Paul and his friends, young men who have become entranced by Garage Music, wanting to become DJs of the French rave scene in the early 1990s. As garage music, and raves, become increasingly popular, they see their dreams beginning to come into reality, only to come crashing down to earth when changing times and the demands of every day life catch up to their party-infused lifestyle. Eden is a film that is epic in scale, but surprisingly intimate, using Mia Hansen-Love's signature low-key tone to encapture a character maturing in front of our eyes. Paul is a character who is very slow in that regard, resisting responsibility and the notion that he has to find a more steady income. Given that the film is about a 20-year odyssey about electronic music, this is probably Hansen-Love's most stylistic film, which at times en-captures the rush of light, color, and impusliveness associated with rave culture. Paul is a character who struggles with drug problems throughout the film, and in the hands of lesser director this aspect could have threatened to derail the film's larger ambitions. For Hansen-Love, this is just another aspect of Paul's inability to deal with responsibility, another obstacle he must overcome to mature into an adult. My favorite aspect of Eden would be Paul's inability to truly grasp the meaning of love, as he struggles to keep meaningful relationships with woman, who want more from a character who struggles to express his feelings. Vibrant and alive, Eden didn't affect me as much on an emotional level as I had hoped, but it is hard to deny the film's ability to capture youth and maturation through Paul's odyssey.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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