Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (Goodbye First Love, Father of My Children), Eden recreates the atmosphere of the house/garage music movement in early 1990s France. The surrogate of this experience is a DJ named Paul (Félix de Givry), who tempers his other life priorities (family, friends, love) for his passion of music. Hansen-Løve co-wrote the film with her brother Sven, who had first-hand experience as a DJ in the scene during the same time (his personal experiences, however, are not the main inspiration for the film). Movie Mezzanine sat down with rising actor de Givry and co-writer Sven Hansen-Løve to talk about this non-biopic, how they made the club scenes realistic, Greta Gerwig’s involvement, and more.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
Is it true that Eden is not based on a true story, but inspired by the atmosphere of this musical movement? How do you want people to contextualize this film?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
Like that! We’ve had a hard time with that. Especially in France, for example, not one of them could say that it was a character, they kept saying that it was me. I had to deal with it.
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
If it were a true-events thing, there would be much more nostalgia and more emphasis. And it would be more written with plots. This pulls much more emotion out of it, while you can see that the character is living on his own, and you don’t have to get involved. His life is unrolling in front of you, like a normal life. If it were based on true events, you can see the plot key points and know where it’s going.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
The closest that Eden gets to such key points is probably the inclusion of Daft Punk’s rise. Is their depiction in the film mostly true?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
What you see in the film is completely true, especially the scene where they cannot get into the club. It’s happened to them a few times, actually. When we wrote the script, Thomas (of Daft Punk) said we should add it, because it’s kind of funny. I heard that it happened to them even after the film was released.
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
The actor who plays the bouncer in the last scene who refuses them, he was the guy who refused them initially. Mia took the real guy because he got fired from the club after it happened, and then he went to another club which is another one in Paris, and he refused Thomas in Paris, after acting it in the movie.
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
Thomas was really upset that time. The media in general respect the lie, it’s a kind of game. They don’t protect themselves so much. It’s not important what they look like, I think the media understands that.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
Felix, how did you grapple with this character, if you’re not playing Sven? Did you factor in your own personality?
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
I actually tried to be like both. The character is definitely very different from me, but I think he’s very different from Sven, too. Though this story is based on the inside more than the events, but also on the quest to find yourself. The character, when I read the script, he existed in his own way. Even though he’s not a strong character, he’s a life, a fragment of time.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
There’s also the aspect that Eden is the story of a movement. What were some things that you wanted to avoid when putting together this character or assembling this story, to keep it free and not just a straight narrative?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
We wanted to avoid all of the clichés about the DJs. They’re so bad. The people [other films] imagine are DJ superstars, drinking champagne in a jet and having sex with many girls. And the good thing for us is that there aren’t many films about DJs before, and not many of them were good. We knew that being realistic would be something that’s fresh and new, just by the choice of being realistic. Talking about the financial aspects, talking about the real problems that you could face as a young DJ in everyday life, the relations with women.
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
There’s 24 Hour Party People.
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
Which is a good one, actually. And I watched a film about the rave scene, which is about this guy who organizes raves, Weekender, but it didn’t work and that film was so full of clichés it was terrible. You can see some club scenes and rave scenes in films, but most of the time they are romanticized or glamorous, and not realistic at all.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
How did you want to make your club scenes realistic?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
We cared a lot about the extras. We did a huge casting for the extras, and we’d almost see each extra one by one and shoot them, which is not something you normally do, but it was very important to my sister to do that. We tried to be realistic with the sound, so we focused on the sound editing. We had to be very careful not to miss anything in all of the details of the decoration, of the sets. The production designer that we found, she cared so much about the details that she made these real flyers, which was a lot of work, and you don’t even see them in the film, but they’re on the ground. This helped us and the crowd to believe the story.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
This story also works as a tale about love fading. How did you want to engage that area?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
Eden is about the way that time passes, and the way it affects you, the way you deal with that. And actually, the character doesn’t deal at all with it, he just wakes up one day and realizes that time has passed. For the relations he encounters, he doesn’t really know that he has a huge relation with anyone other than music. He’s blind in a way. He doesn’t realize what is happening to him.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
Do you see this all as a statement about relationships, or just something about Paul?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
I think it’s both. It’s not something completely like a general rule that love fades, but it is saying that you can experience that the way you can experience many other things. But not everybody has the experience to build something with someone, because they’re passionate about something else.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
One of the women in Paul’s life is played by Greta Gerwig. How did she get involved with the project? How long was she on set?
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
Two days.
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
We shot them in Paris and New York. Mia wanted her, and she was a big fan. And I was too from The House of the Devil. I loved her appearance in that, she gets shot in the head [laughs]. She was so sweet and so funny in that small part. I was a big fan. First I met Mia via her manager, and Greta’s manager reaction at first, also because it was a small part, was that this was never going to happen. But then someone else talked to Greta, and then Greta said she was a fan of Mia and really wanted to do it. She’s the fucking best.
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
And now Greta’s agent is Mia’s agent.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
There’s a scene in Eden where everyone’s watching Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, because one character wants to convince the others that it is a masterpiece. Are there any films that you think are worth a second look in the same way?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
I think Ken Russell’s films are pretty good, actually. If you watch some of them they’re pretty intense.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
Sven, does working with this story provide clarity to what you did experience, or does it provide more questions?
SVEN HANSEN-LØVE
It doesn’t provide straight answers, but it provided me distance from my own life. It’s not like I’m thinking about it all of the time, but it’s more in a deep and natural way.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
Felix, what have you taken away most from the experience of this film?
FÉLIX DE GIVRY
It was such an adventure to do the film, before, during, and after with Sven & Mia. There’s a sort of creative family that really made my link with cinema stronger.
