Eden and After

“eden and after” can be divided into three sections by location: eden, a factory just outside eden and a coastal middle-eastern region which dominates the film’s second half. eden is a combination nightclub, playpen, piet mondrian installation, and house of mirrors. those outside of eden speculate about the hedonism and crime that goes on within, while the jaded sensualists that haunt the place act out the creative rumors from sheer boredom. they live a life free from responsibility, emotion and truth, occupying most of their time with word association, exotic role-playing games, hallucinogenic drugs and mock funerals. franz, a waiter who “feigns to be bizarre and ominous” serves drinks.

this charmed, but meaningless existence is shattered by the arrival of “the stranger” from the outside world. violette (catherine jourdan), a short-haired girl from eden, samples his “powder of fear” and experiences a powerful series of horrifying visions and sensations. she soon emerges as the main character during a terrifying night in the industrial landscape that surrounds eden. when she returns to her living quarters she finds that a valuable abstract painting, her only possession, has been stolen. she journeys to the middle-east to recover it, but finds that so-called reality is a nightmare wonderland far stranger and crueler than her sheltered fantasy-life in eden. it’s a testament to robbe-grillet’s skill as a provocative surrealist that at times i felt that his allegories were plainly spelled out, but moments later i would be utterly baffled as to the precise meanings. certainly the title and plot have a death of innocence hue, and they work both as a metaphor for the personal transition from home/school to independence/work and for the sixties counter-culture watching its idealism turn trite or grow corrupt. yet this hardly works as a skeleton key for unlocking the full meaning behind the story. besides, much of the film’s magic comes from its mythic spirit-quest deliv...

Yikes, talk about self-indulgent. It does start off quite frighteningly as a girl is ambushed in an office by a group of colleagues and stripped on what looks like a sacrificial table! Then we discover that it's nothing more than a bunch of bored and wired students who have nothing better to do than play their own version of psycho-cleudo. Then they encounter the enigmatic "Duchemin" (Pierre Zimmer) who regales them with stories of his time in North Africa and of a special powder that could change their lives for ever. Gullible as they are, off we head to some beautifully pristine Tunisian seaside adobe homes where the rest of this plays out. Surreal is putting the rest of this mildly, so don't be looking for anything akin to a traditional plot as the group start to hallucinate and partake in some real Marquis de Sade kind of stuff. Perhaps it's meant to be erotic - but nudity in itself (almost exclusively female) is not necessarily sexy nor provocative. For the last half hour or so, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you're watching a "Playboy" shoot. To be fair, the randomness and unpredictability does work at times and the whole thing keeps you on your toes for a while, but as it gets towards what passes for a conclusion, I felt that perhaps I'd have volunteered for one of the venomous little scorpions that may (or, of course, may not) have featured earlier. It's far too long, far too slow and no attempt is made to develop any form of characterisation amongst these pretty introspective young folks who are easy pickings for their new mentor. It's was showcased at the abandoned 1970 Berlinale and though I am glad I watched it, I shall never bother watching it again.