During a key point in Mia Hansen-Love's nebulous, French house
music drama Eden, aspiring
DJ Paul Vallee (Felix De Givry) describes his sound as a cross between euphoria
and melancholy. It's a fitting description for the film, as well; a deeply
personal coming-of-age story infused with electronic energy and analog sadness.
Based in part on the DJ career of Hansen-Love's brother Sven, with whom she
co-wrote the screenplay, Eden's formless and lackadaisical
narrative perfectly captures the feel of the '90s French House era, both its
raise and inevitable fall from grace.
Hansen-Love has always played somewhat
freely with the passage of time in her films, and in the case of Eden we see her coast breezily through
20 years of the French electronic music scene beginning in 1992. It's then that
we're introduced to the hopes and dreams of Paul, who begins a Garage duo
called Cheers with his buddy in hopes of riding the music's wave of popularity
in Paris nightclubs. Paul's other buddies would go on to form the popular duo,
Daft Punk, and there's a funny running gag that has them unable to get on a
club's guest list despite their rising fame. But for Paul, getting recognized
isn't a problem.
Paul's sound, which is a little like House
music with a touch of disco-style vocals, puts him in the orbit of other DJs,
celebs, journalists, and more. Fame doesn't necessarily equal riches, though,
and Paul struggles to get by while his worried mother urges him to another
career. Love is hard to come by, too, and he has a wistful fling with an
American writer (Greta Gerwig in an extended cameo) that ends in heartbreak.
His hopes of a bright and lucrative future with her are a peek into his lofty,
unreachable aspirations that will carry on throughout. Eventually he settles
comfortably with the mercurial Louis (Pauline Etienne) who sticks with him
through good times and bad until the bad times start to pile up.
As the time passes and the years roll by,
the actual dates begin to matter less and less. Paul drifts aimlessly from one
gig to the next, always seeming to be at his happiest when controlling the
crowd with his music....when in his "Eden", so to speak. And of
course, there are drugs everywhere. This is the '90s rave scene, after
all...but Hansen-Love doesn't reduce the era to simple dance party clichés.
Paul's personal demons remain a quiet, but ever-present fixture in the
background while his true drug of choice is the music. It blinds him to all
things, and if Eden is about anything it's about the
cost of such unbreakable personal ambition. Paul doesn't deal with his mounting
debt, his fracturing love life, nor does he notice shifting attitudes toward
the Garage sound. He's too busy, too happy when in the midst of the peaking,
grooving mob. Hansen-Love's constantly moving camera and the steady thump of
the soundtrack puts us right in the middle of the swarm. You can practically
smell the sweat and feel the kick of the bass.
While Hansen-Love managed to snag a pair
of big names in Gerwig and Brady Corbet for small roles, the film belongs to
Givry and Etienne. It's amazing to watch how Givry's performance evolves as
Paul matures from a wide-eyed kid into a seasoned DJ veteran. Alongside
Etienne's layered, nuanced performance, they make for an immensely entrancing
pair, perfect for an immensely entrancing, if somewhat sobering film. This isn't
the story of how an aspiring DJ hit it big and took over the world. That would
be the Daft Punk story, which is mostly left in the background as a distant
parallel to Paul's struggles. Eden is about the gulf between
aspirations and reality that so many hopeful dreamers face, and no matter how
far one falls the wheels of life just keep on spinning.
Rating: 4 out of 5
