Eden

Mia Hansen-Løve / FR, 2014 / 131 min.

A sensitive portrait of a struggling DJ who has been doing the rounds of the French club scene for two decades running. Mia Hansen-Løve presents a convincing story of the fleeting pleasures and hidden disappointments of nightlife in the 1990s. Eden failed to find a distributor in the Netherlands – now the film is screened in EYE.

Eden opens in 1992, the year the illegal rave scene moved to basements, deserted buildings and even submarines. This is where Paul, a literature student, gets to love garage music and becomes infected with the dance virus. Together with the unassuming Stan he decides to form a DJ team, after which the two find themselves at the centre of a coterie of depressed artists and various hangers-on and girl friends, including the American expat Julia (Greta Gerwig).

In the meantime, the career of two of Paul”s fellow mixers is taking off. Having formed the musical duo Daft Punk, they blow the French electronic scene wide open. Paul meanwhile continues to mix records in the face of mounting financial problems, friends drifting away and a cocaine habit that is turning into more than an occasional treat.

Paul”s club nights are less and less a celebration of Dionysian freedom and more and more an obligation. Being a DJ has become just another job. Mia Hansen-Løve wrote the true-ringing screenplay together with her brother, a former DJ who was responsible for the film”s professional accuracy. The camerawork of the film is marvellous and there is, of course, a lot of music.

The film has not been released before in the Netherlands and is now showing in EYE.