Eden (2014 film)

Eden
Film poster
Directed by	Mia Hansen-Løve
Written by	Mia Hansen-Løve Sven Hansen-Løve
Produced by	Charles Gillibert Jimmy Price
Starring	Félix de Givry Pauline Etienne Golshifteh Farahani
Cinematography	Denis Lenoir
Edited by	Marion Monnier
Music by	Daft Punk Joe Smooth Frankie Knuckles Terry Hunter
Production company	CG Cinéma
Distributed by	Broad Green Pictures
Release dates	5 September 2014 (2014-09-05) (TIFF) 19 November 2014 (2014-11-19) (France)
Running time	131 minutes
Country	France
Languages	French English
Budget	$5.2 million
Box office	$63,345

Eden is a 2014 French drama film directed by Mia Hansen-Løve and co-written with Sven Hansen-Løve. The film stars Félix de Givry and Pauline Etienne. The film premiered in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. It was also screened in the 52nd edition of the New York Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival. The film's U.S. theatrical release was 19 June 2015.

The film opens in 1992 outside a rave in the woods somewhere near Paris. Background chat is audible, and centres around drugs and other parties. The central character Paul, who will become a DJ, leaves to sit in the woods and trip out by himself. A friend comes to find him and they return to the party, which is now over. Next shot, we see Paul sneaking out of his cultured family home to attend another party. He joins his 2 best friends, his future dj partner, and a graphic artist who is always drawing in a notebook and will go on to do the artwork for their parties. There is a crowd of people, mostly men, at a train station, waiting to head to the party. Paul points out two of the men to his friends as ‘music buffs’. They later become Daft punk. 3 years pass and the friends are beginning to set up a night called Cheers. In his bedroom, Paul flicks through his records, 3 other characters sit on the floor of his room, one of them has drawn a flyer for Cheers, a woman suggests it may be too retro, a man corrects her, no it is just right. The characters enter another rave, Paul moves through the crowd. We see the graphic artist tell a woman that she doesn't understand music. Paul is riding his bike wearing a rough trade record bag. He enters the apartment of his american girlfriend. She is an aspiring writer, he has read one of her stories and tells her he likes it, but she does not seem convinced. Cut to her in bed naked, post fuck, He plays her a record, she says ‘it's great to dance to but i don't know if i would listen to it everyday at home’ he replies quickly that he would. Paul is at a house party. The 2 music buffs, who are now Daft Punk, enter carrying a crate of records. They move to the decks and line up their track Da funk. They fade the music that is playing out, to disapproving sounds from the crowd. They drop Da funk and wait nervously for the atmosphere to re-establish itself, which it does. The woman who was earlier told she doesn't understand music comments that the track is not bad, but she prefered what was playing before. She is again told she doesn't understand music, this time by Paul who says da funk ‘fucking rocks’. On the day of the first ever Cheers party Paul finds a letter on his doormat from the american girlfriend saying she is moving back to new york and wont make it to the party. We hear her voice and see a shadowy image of her reading the letter superimposed over the image of Paul reading the letter. 1999: The girl who doesn't understand music is now paul’s girlfriend. the cracks in their lifestyle are starting to show, they all do alot of drugs, paul ‘needs a break from parties’ he is broke and has messed up at university. The characters start to wonder if their tinnitus is really brain tumours and discuss how they freak out at night on come downs. 2001: a trip to new york, One more time by Daft Punk plays over footage of a very shit looking daytime Cheers party at MOMA PS1. Paul visits his american ex, who has now had her stories published and is pregnant. Paul’s friends begin to warn him he is doing too much coke. They hear that the graphic artist, who refused to join them in america and seemed depressed when they left, has killed himself. Paul leaves a radio session to cry. 2007 Daft Punk have achieved global success while Cheer’s musical style has started to date. A promoter tells them they need to update their sound: ‘you don't change, but audiences do’. Paul and another charecter are working on a track, trying to decide between a number of almost identical drum sounds. One is dismissed by paul for being ‘too feminine’ At first the other man (who is wearing a technics shirt) doesn't understand how a kick drum could sound feminine, then he gets it ‘i see what you mean… thin… superficial’ By 2008 the girl who doesn't understand music is no longer Paul’s girlfriend and lives by the sea with her 3 children. Paul visits her, he observes that in 15 years one of her daughters will be 19, and instead of the mother he can marry the daughter. She replies, ‘find a new line of work, she wont want an old has been dj’ 2010 Cheers have now truly flopped. We see the characters at their own poorly attended NYE party. The camera follows a woman moving round the dance floor saying goodbye to everyone as she has to take her child home while the father stays out. Paul has a bitchy looking girlfriend who makes him buy her champagne and wont sleep with him. By the time Paul is 34 things are going very wrong, he has a beard, is bankrupt and is djing wedding parties and still doing a lot of coke. He has another different girlfriend who does more coke than he does. The girl who doesn’t understand music tells him she was pregnant with his child but aborted it. Paul has a breakdown and has to tell his mum he has a drug problem. The next time we see him he has a job selling vacuum cleaners, is off coke and is attending an evening class in literature. At the evening class he finds another girlfriend, who only ‘vaguely’ knows what house music is, but loves Daft Punk. 2014- The penultimate scene: Daft punk, who now also have beards, enter a club. Paul is there too but he is not drinking. He dejectedly watches A female dj play music from her macbook. The scene is overdubbed with a very sad Daft Punk song ‘Within’. The final scene is Paul in bed reading a poem his new girlfriend says reminds her of him. We hear her voice and see a shadowy image of her reading it superimposed over the image of him reading it.

Cast

• Félix de Givry as Paul
• Pauline Étienne as Louise
• Vincent Macaigne as Arnaud
• Hugo Conzelmann as Stan
• Zita Hanrot as Anaïs
• Roman Kolinka as Cyril
• Ugo Bienvenu as Quentin
• Paul Spera as Guillaume
• Greta Gerwig as Julia
• Laurent Cazanave as Nico
• Vincent Lacoste as Thomas
• Arnaud Azoulay as Guy-Man
• Sigrid Bouaziz as Anne-Claire
• Golshifteh Farahani as Yasmin
• Laura Smet as Margot
• Brady Corbet as Larry
• Claire Tran as Midori

Production

Sven Hansen-Løve (left) served as the inspiration for Paul, played by Félix de Givry (right).

The film is loosely based on Mia Hansen-Løve's brother Sven's life. In addition to being the inspiration behind the film he also co-wrote the script.

The film took three years to be produced in part because obtaining the rights to the music was so expensive. Hansen-Løve went through two different producers over the course of the pre-production process and was only able to obtain the necessary rights to license the music after Daft Punk agreed to license their music for the lowest possible fee causing other musicians to join them.

Filming began in November 2013 and was completed on 31 January 2014.

Reception

Eden received generally positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 83% based on 92 reviews and an average rating of 7.4/10. The consensus statement reads, "Eden uses 1990s club culture as the appropriately intoxicating backdrop for a sensitive, low-key look at aging and the price of pursuing one's dreams." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 82 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."

External links

• Eden at IMDb
• Official websiteTemplate:Fr icon