On the surface, Mia Hansen-Løve’s exquisite, delicately nostalgic film Eden is a personal homage to the “French Touch” generation that gives electronic music its long-overdue eulogy in cinema. It is a beautiful, slick, and streamlined surface, ripe with melancholy and nostalgia, experienced both by the viewer and the film’s characters as they journey through two decades, starting with the early 90s. But just beneath this façade, there is more substance than meets the eye: a quietly aching tale of a musician (in this case, a DJ) and his all-consuming hunger to devour his passion freely, with no regard for its cost and aftermath. With its story flourishing steadily in both of these dimensions, Eden’s cadence is a mystical one, penetrating one’s attention and (eventually) soul, as it builds its momentum evenly and gradually.
There certainly isn’t a prerequisite to be a house-music connoisseur to fully appreciate Eden’s sophisticated pulse, but possessing a basic level of familiarity with its persistently repetitive and steady rhythm could be one way in to the film. Like most electronic music, or garage (one of its countless derivatives that is referenced frequently for being the protagonist’s favorite), Eden is deceitfully monotonous and cumulatively transfixing in its procession. The film follows Paul (richly played by Félix de Givry), a Parisian DJ in 1992, who is just starting out with his craft amid a rapidly blooming electronic music scene in France, full of glossy rave parties and shiny nightlife. Forming a DJ collective with his friend Stan (Hugo Conzelmann) named “Cheers”, Paul willingly abandons his other passion –poetry and literature- and pursues his music full time, after hours and through the early hours of the next day in accordance with the tradition of his music’s lifestyle. As Denis Lenoir’s dreamlike, stunning cinematography highlights the euphoric nature of dark nightclubs with colorful, gleaming lights, we watch Paul glide through days, weeks, and years –units of time Hansen-Løve welds together in an unbroken continuum – and works his way up to the top. But when his inevitable decline arrives, after traveling around the world as a sought-after DJ, his dependency on drugs grows, along with his financial troubles and romantic dilemmas involving a series of girlfriends with whom he tries to launch committed relationships (the first of them played by Greta Gerwig in a small but essential part).
Structured chronologically and in two parts (titled “Paradise Garage” and “Lost in Music”), Eden’s handle on time is as remarkable as any film in Hansen-Løve’s filmography. Like she did in The Father of My Children –with the story of a French filmmaker sharply divided into two sections – she arranges the two chapters of Paul’s story with wisely formed increments of the unremarkable day-to-day and crises with varying degrees of urgencies. Sometimes, days and weeks go by slowly, revealing small details of Paul’s life with swelling significance. Other times, we find ourselves jumping ahead several years, but equally seamlessly and uneventfully.
Hansen-Løve based her film on her brother Sven (the co-writer of Eden) and his real-life experiences as a DJ who quit after 20 years. His story, and the writing duo’s naturalistic, non-sensational romancing of it, brings Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air to mind in its depiction of youth, shaped not only by immediate events and trends, but also their lingering aftermath. (I wasn’t surprised to find out Hansen-Løve credited Assayas’ film as a brief influence in the birth of her project.) Eden’s Paul and Something in the Air’s Gilles similarly yearn to hold onto something before it slips out of their hands and vanishes entirely. Yet perhaps a more obvious kinship can be found between Paul and the lead of Inside Llewyn Davis. As Llewyn stubbornly holds on to his ideals and believes in his talents more than he should (even when one producer curtly tells him “I don’t see a lot of money here), his stance is a mixture of passion, denial, rebellion, and helplessness, all of which also hold true for Paul (who admittedly is far less arrogant than Llewyn). The Coen brothers let us watch Llewyn get beaten up outside of the venue where Bob Dylan takes the stage. Hansen-Løve’s Paul takes a beating otherwise. As Paul’s downturn in life continues on an all-consuming and increasingly dissatisfactory path (his gigs become more embarrassing, for thinning audiences with no regard for his “garage” style), two of his friends rise further into their fame as the inimitable duo Daft Punk –a juxtaposition that contributes to Eden’s ironic humor and quietly brewing sorrow at equal measure. Saying Eden’s soundtrack is deeply, thoughtfully bountiful won’t be an original observation, but when Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo” kicks in and elevates the melancholy of the scene it’s accompanying (after a beloved friend’s funeral), it assumes another dimension of defeat and longing.
It is not a spoiler to disclose that Paul gives up on DJing and eventually opts to clean up his act with the help of his always present and supportive mother. He goes back to his other passion, literature, as a creative outlet, and lands himself a mindless desk job. But is attempting a life as a responsible adult exactly a happy ending for Paul? Well, he doesn’t necessarily become “a careerist” (a trail Llewyn Davis would surely despise), yet he also willingly lets go. But then again, Paul is a product of different times; the times we currently live in where artistic passions are more easily disposable than careerist pursuits. One of Eden’s many brilliances lies in this sobering, tender revelation.
