christopher-underwood
Director, Alain Robbe-Grillet clearly had a liking for young ladies in very short mini dresses and their being chased and sometimes caught and sometimes more. Well he films this so beautifully and has such a beautiful lead in Catherine Jourdan that it is hard to object too much. I understand this was inspired by composer Schoenberg's original twelve tone technique and so there are a number (twelve actually) elements of narrative with repetition but I'm not sure I'm too interested in all that. The film is wonderful to look at, at all times and has some sort of narrative flow but it can be an effort to stay with it because nothing ever seems to be resolved or made very clear. The director, of course wrote Last Year at Marienbad and the pretty young Jourdan appeared with Marianne Faithful in, Girl on a Motorcycle.
matheusmarchetti
This is one of the horror genre's most delirious, imaginative, nightmarish and disturbing films ever made, on the same vein of Andrej Zulawski's "Possession" and, to a lesser extent, Harry Kümel's "Malpertuis". Directed by Alain Robbe Grillet (who wrote the screenplay for the equally enigmatic "Last Year in Marienbad") does not disappoint in creating a suffocating dreamlike atmosphere, as he takes the audience, through the eyes of the protagonist, in a "Alice in Wonderland"-like trip, with a little Marquis De Sade twist. The story is told basically through striking, thought provoking imagery, with dialog kept to a minimum, something that can be very unappealing to some, but I found it particularly fascinating. We follow the Mia Farrow-lookalike Catherine Jourdan as Violet, who goes to Tunisia in order to find out the truth behind the strange death of a mysterious man she met at a bar (the Eden of the title) during one of her friends' drug-induced games. That's basically all I can tell you, because it's a film so difficult to describe in words, you just have to see it for yourself to understand. Grillet's script, just like the film's setting, is a twisted, mind-bending labyrinth of sexual deviance and murder, where nothing is what it seems. In fact, once you've seen it, exactly how much of the events actually did happen, and if so, what did they mean. As in "Marienbad...", Grillet haunts the viewer with many questions, which may or may not be answer within this maze of a film. As mentioned before, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like this kind of deliciously bizarre, surreal film that will undoubtedly leave you scratching your head long after you've watched it, this one is a must see. It's kind of hard to find, but it's really worth it.
ametaphysicalshark
I suppose an argument on whether or not "Eden and After" is a load of pretentious twaddle or a film with real substance could go on forever, but whether or not there is more than the typical late 60's/early 70's drugged-out pseudo-intellectualism here is irrelevant. I don't think Robbe-Grillet's intention is to make a 'Grand Statement' of any sort, "Eden and After" seems interested mostly in asking questions and provoking a response from the audience, as well as in its aesthetic sensibilities."Eden and After" has been described as a highbrow soft-core flick, not only in another IMDb comment but elsewhere as well, and it's a fair enough label- many of the images here, particularly in the last forty minutes of the film are certainly erotic, or at least obviously were to Robbe-Grillet. Robbe-Grillet has achieved genuine sensuality with his imagery. It's not porn, there's none of the visceral satisfaction of that sort of thing, it's actually evocative enough to earn the 'erotica' label, although the film certainly has ambition beyond that.Indeed, dismissing this as a skin flick is a bit moronic; there's so much more here. It's a dark, captivating, occasionally nightmarish, and very interesting film. The sound mixing here is absolutely superb, much like it was in the only other Robbe-Grillet film I've seen so far, "Trans-Europ-Express", and the cinematography stunning, especially after the film shifts focus to Tunisia in its final act. This was Robbe-Grillet's first color film and the opportunity is not wasted- everything from the minutest detail of the design to the cast's wardrobe is a carefully-orchestrated visual extravaganza of bold colors, often used very well in the film to emphasize a point."Eden and After" is something special, and whether or not you like it you have to admit that it's a unique experience and that much of the imagery is jarring and very effective. For me it was one of the most intense and involving viewing experiences of my life and is already one of my favorite films, having viewed it twice in a row, something I have rarely ever done before. I can understand disliking this one, but you have to give it credit at least as an aesthetic achievement.
dj_bassett
EDEN AND AFTER is the kind of movie that tends to get overrated by some. Robbe-Grillet is a famous French intellectual and artist and that immediately sends some people Looking For Significance. In fact, though, EDEN is basically a softcore flick covered with spoonfuls of Sixties pretension. I like that kind of thing, once in awhile, and so I basically liked it, but it's hardly anything *more* than that.A group of bored students are wiling away the hours at a club called "Eden", doing silly things like staging pseudo Russian roulette encounters, when suddenly they meet up with a mysterious stranger who offers them a way out of their boredom, with descriptions of Africa and a powder called something like "powder of fear". The leader of the gang (the quite lovely Catherine Jourdan) takes the powder, and the rest of the movie might be interpreted as her hallucination: rampant s&m imagery, tribal dances in the Middle East, her friends now seen as enemies, and a decrepit factory belching out odd effluent.It doesn't make sense, I'm not even sure it's supposed to make much sense, Robbe-Grillet or no Robbe-Grillet. There's a lot of Sixties "experimentation", and that already seems very dated nowadays --but it can be approached as camp, I happen to have a small weakness for the style and generally enjoyed it. There's a lot of silly playing around with the sound in particular, as well as a lot of self-important running about and the Introduction of Very Important Symbols (the factory, for instance, although it gets weirder).This kind of thing can get bogged down pretty quickly, and indeed like most movies of this type it could've stood 15 to 20 minutes cut out of it. It helps, though, that there's plenty of gratuitous nudity and generally trippy imagery about, to keep it moving. R-G had a basic, but striking color sense, and seemed particularly fond of bold colors over white to make a statement. Ms. Jourdan is beautiful and we get to see a lot of her.I would describe this as a highbrow softcore flick, and if that description perks your interest you should check it out. But I wouldn't waste my time looking for depths that aren't there.
AD
