Eden

Life demands we choose a path and walk it. How fast or hard or far we go is the mag­i­cal vari­able. It’s the process of bristling against the stim­uli of the world, tak­ing in the influ­ences of oth­er peo­ple, nego­ti­at­ing the topog­ra­phy of fash­ion and pol­i­tics and suc­cumb­ing to the strange, mag­netis­ing lure of desire. It’s about being con­stant­ly prompt­ed to ques­tion whether the path you’ve cho­sen was the cor­rect one. And this isn’t us pro­claim­ing from on high, mere­ly sec­ond-guess­ing the inten­tions of the bril­liant French direc­tor Mia Hansen-Løve, whose lat­est mas­ter­piece, Eden, plays dole­ful exis­ten­tial ennui to a sound­track of flut­ter­ing 120 bmp floor-fillers.

Her fourth fea­ture opens on an unas­sum­ing, bright young man, Paul Val­lée (Félix de Givry), as he emerges some­what fraz­zled from a docked sub­ma­rine at twi­light – a fairy tale set­up if ever there was one. He slips awk­ward­ly through an over­grown glade, side-step­ping the tin­gling, pan-Euro­pean rev­ellers as if he’s in pos­ses­sion of some mirac­u­lous piece of infor­ma­tion on which he alone must con­tem­plate. The ves­sel is an impro­vised rave venue, and the muf­fled musi­cal siren call can be heard in the mid­dle dis­tance. Or, this could well be the back­ground noise inside Paul’s own head. He props up against a tree, lights a cig­a­rette and glances sky­ward. An ani­mat­ed bird loops through the canopy and, with­in an instant, is gone. This is Paul’s epiphany. It’s entire­ly unex­plained and whol­ly beau­ti­ful, some­thing only he sees and per­haps the kind of pri­vate ora­cle which sets lives in motion. The ensu­ing film is about Paul try­ing to prove to him­self that what he saw was real.

Hansen-Løve’s pre­vi­ous three fea­tures were all ripped from raw per­son­al expe­ri­ence, and they all in some way picked apart death, grief and the elu­sive pos­si­bil­i­ty of renew­al. She has said that these films – which include 2007’s Tout est par­don­né, 2009’s Father of My Chil­dren and 2012’s Good­bye, First Love – form a loose tril­o­gy. Where the first two dealt with death in a more lit­er­al guise, Good­bye, First Love looked at the death of love, with an intense for­ma­tive rela­tion­ship being abrupt­ly extin­guished, though its warm embers burn on in the mind of its hyper-sen­si­tive hero­ine. Eden, which is direct­ly inspired by the life of Hansen-Løve’s broth­er, Sven, who co-wrote the screen­play with her, assumes a near-iden­ti­cal dra­mat­ic arc to Good­bye, First Love, only replac­ing the cen­tral het­ero­sex­u­al romance with a love affair between a man and his music. And music, we dis­cov­er, can be a harsh mistress.

Paul yearns to be a DJ, though he aims to retain a sense of musi­cal purism – his playlists are formed entire­ly of ear­ly ​’90s ​“French touch” garage music. Ascen­dent sub-gen­res inter­est him none, and his heart is giv­en over to a sound which dur­ing a radio inter­view he defines as being the exact mid-point between the euphor­ic and the melan­cholic – a handy dou­ble-edged descrip­tor which also nails the gen­tly vac­il­lat­ing tone of the film at large. Paul’s jour­ney melds per­son­al cri­sis, fleet­ing pros­per­i­ty and alter­na­tive social his­to­ry in a way that’s sug­ges­tive of one of Mar­tin Scorsese’s era-bridg­ing bil­dungsro­man such as Good­fel­las or Casino.

Hansen-Løve, though, is less inter­est­ed in explain­ing why things hap­pen, and is more open to being tick­led and sur­prised by ran­dom iner­tia. She offers no lessons in Eden, just obser­va­tions, the nar­ra­tive ellipses hold guard against didac­ti­cism. And this isn’t a way of shirk­ing cin­e­mat­ic respon­si­bil­i­ty in what some might see as a search for pre-pack­aged pro­fun­di­ty. Rich emo­tions are made man­i­fest through minor details, and where Hansen-Løve’s intri­cate and intu­itive con­struc­tion mode might evade con­spic­u­ous pay­offs, it’s the things that are not hap­pen­ing and the peo­ple who are not there that are often the most important.

His­to­ry and the pass­ing of time in Eden are pre­sent­ed as entire­ly expe­ri­en­tial, and while the film does rough­ly adhere to a mar­ket­ing syn­op­sis which infers a musi­cal biopic cov­er­ing some 20 years of this spe­cif­ic ​“scene”, it’s much more than a series of care­ful­ly mount­ed Wiki-touch­stones. This gran­u­lar view of col­lec­tive per­cep­tion recalls the qui­et­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary films of Tai­wanese direc­tor Hou Hsiao-Hsien, such as 1989’s A City of Sad­ness or 1993’s The Pup­pet­mas­ter, both real sto­ries told from imag­ined per­spec­tives. A pro­fessed admir­er of Hou, Hansen-Løve has her­self pro­duced a film about a sin­gle per­son pass­ing through his­to­ry, not about his­to­ry itself – its con­tin­gent ruc­tions are felt rather than seen.

In terms of its coun­ter­cul­tur­al sub­ject mat­ter, Eden is almost a West­ern remake of Hou’s 2001 film Mil­len­ni­um Mam­bo, itself smit­ten and inspired by the hyp­not­ic qual­i­ties of house music and of lives lived by night. The heady pow­er of nos­tal­gia is wield­ed in a way which latch­es on to the import of feel­ing the moment, not recog­nis­ing its sig­nif­i­cance: how it feels to lis­ten to music; how it feels to play music to oth­er peo­ple; how it feels to walk into a club; how it feels to be chas­ing a dream.

It’s not with­out its pop lev­i­ty, mind you. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Chris­to and Thomas Ban­gal­ter (aka Daft Punk) appear (played by actors) in an ear­ly house par­ty scene, a small-scale lark which sees the pair shuf­fle awk­ward­ly behind the decks then non­cha­lant­ly drop their wall-shak­ing sin­gle ​’Da Funk’ to a rap­tur­ous response. (Paul is in the oth­er room at the time.) It’s an amus­ing scene, and arguably Hansen-Løve’s only con­ces­sion to this kind of roman­tic you-had-to-be-there mythol­o­gis­ing, often the sole con­stituent of most Hol­ly­wood music bios. Oth­er­wise, its music selec­tions are a mod­el of dis­cern­ment and from-the-source insid­er knowl­edge. They are care­ful­ly placed over the action, but rarely beat-matched to it.

Eden is also ful­ly attuned to the notion that we can’t help but gauge our own hap­pi­ness against that of the peo­ple who sur­round us. Paul has a brief fling with an Amer­i­can author played by Gre­ta Ger­wig who flits back to New York from Paris one night leav­ing a Dear John on his doorstep. Years lat­er, at the height of his suc­cess, Paul vis­its her while in the US for a DJing engage­ment at Brooklyn’s PS1. He sees her set­tled with a new part­ner (Brady Cor­bet, who seems to be on a mis­sion to cameo in as many for­eign lan­guage films as is human­ly pos­si­ble) and heav­i­ly preg­nant. Whether Paul takes stock of this moment and sees it as a fea­si­ble life junc­ture for his own rela­tion­ship with the one woman he real­ly con­nects with, Louise (Pauline Eti­enne), is left open. Hansen-Løve could well have placed this scene here as a way to empha­sise Paul’s imper­me­able con­nec­tion to his cho­sen méti­er, that nor­mal­cy is not yet some­thing he under­stands as being attainable.

The Bib­li­cal con­no­ta­tions of the title refer to Paul even­tu­al­ly renounc­ing the plea­sure of music for the knowl­edge of sur­vival. It’s an unbear­ably sad film, stern in its refusal to acqui­esce to moti­va­tion­al banal­i­ties such as doing what you love or being the best you can be. The world shows no quar­ter to those unwill­ing to roll with its hard punch­es. As the mar­ket for ​“French touch” garage dwin­dles, so does Paul’s pro­fes­sion­al prospects. His staunch unwill­ing­ness to take stock and start anew see him left alone, with one ago­nis­ing late twist see­ing him dis­cov­er an alter­na­tive, pos­si­bly more sta­ble future which, at the cru­cial moment, he was deemed too imma­ture to be offered.

It would be easy to come out of Eden feel­ing that you’ve just received a les­son in cau­tion­ary fatal­ism, being remind­ed that every­thing we hold dear will die in our arms. Life gives you lemons, you make lemon­ade, and then one day, the lemons expire. Yet every­thing hangs on the film’s very final moments, and at the low­est ebb, Hansen-Løve spec­tac­u­lar­ly turns things around with a Robert Cree­ley poem called ​‘The Rhythm’ which alludes to life as a cycli­cal sequence of deaths and rebirths. Only as the screen final­ly fades are we assured that Paul real­ly did see that bird.