"How was it?
Average."
"If this story bores you,You're heartless."
"Since in our studios and uneventful life,Nothing ever happens."
"Dead matter becomes magic."
"They call me Duchemin."
"Not to be,Or else play.That's the dillemma."
"He pronounced only rare wordsMaybe he didn't speak at all."
"I found what I didn't know was what I was looking for."
Imagine if you mixed Godard, with abstract visuals and an incredibly nihilistic message, if you did, Eden and After would be the product.
THE STORY
Eden And After follows a group of french students, and Duchimen. The group of students, bored with their studios and laborous lives, take pleasure after class in a cafe called Eden, where they perform bizzarre rituals and games, which include a spiritual reconstruction of russian roulette, and a dramatic yet insane recreation of one of them being poisoned to death.
On one evening, the before named Duchemin arrives at cafe Eden, and engages them in magic tricks. He asks one of the group's member to pick up shards of glass of the floor, and miraculously heals the scars on her hand instantaneously. After showing the group his trick, he then offers a drug he names 'fear powder', and Violette accepts. She is then sent into a whirlpool of torture and murder, however shortly after returning back to reality, begins compulsively bursting out in laughter.
After this strange encounter, Violette agrees to meet Duchemin later that night at an abandoned factory, where she gets losts in the labyrinth. After suffering a series of hallucinations at said factory, she exits the factory the next morning and discovers Duchemin dead at the foot of a staircase, and finds a Tunisian postcard in his pocket.
When she returns home, she finds out that a valuable painting in her house was stolen, and she flees to Tunisia, where she finds Dutchman, Duchemin's doppelganger, and they become lovers.
A group of thugs who may or may not be the students she was with, at Eden, kidnap Violette. The thugs then begin to subject her to pyschological, sexual, and physical torture.
This is all you really need to know and the most I could really say about the plot before it borders spoilers and besides that, you should definitely watch this.
ANALYSIS
The story shows the group of french students, who are essentially You, or humanity as a whole. The film talks about how life is inherently nonsensical, and about how it is nihilistically boring.
Eden, is most infamously know as, The Garden Of Eden, where in the bible both Adam and Eve lived in perfect blissful happiness before they ate the apple from the tree of knowledge, which then resulted in them being banished from said place.
The reason the cafe is named Eden, is because it is the students own personal Garden Of Eden, where they can perform upon their sadistic and strange yet comforting (for them), in an attempt to ignore or remove the boredom from their life however, from the quote '"How was it? Average.", we can tell that their attempts to spice up their life is not exactly succesful.
Another interpretation of Eden And After is that its a heavily stylised reinterpretation of the lives of Adam And Eve, where the Cafe symbolises The garden, Tunisia represents the chaotic nature of earth, and the thugs represent the sadomasochism of sin and man in general.
A more realistic interpretation is that, Eden and France are a portrayal of a lacklustre and work oriented life, while Tunisia is the chaotic and 'crazy' world and reality that the students desire.
In this interpretation, the doppelgangers show the difference and contrast of how the main characters would act in the two seperate realities, where Duchimen is a magician and a almost messiah to the students in France, where else in Tunisia he is a free man who explores love. Violette is a bored mathematics student in France, but in tunisia she is kidnapped by thugs and tortured, releasing an almost hidden desire for pain and intense feeling, shown through her captives acts to sadochism.
FINAL THOUGHTS
An incredible film, and my last film of the summer break, Eden and after perfects filmmaking and storytelling in general, with its experimental non linear and non scripted story, bizarre and abstract visuals, and psychosexual allegories.
Thank you for reading this review and please like it.
100/100Quirky, Bizzarre and Surreal Storytelling, A list of my favourite 'weird films'
"How was it?
Average."
"If this story bores you,You're heartless."
"Since in our studios and uneventful life,Nothing ever happens."
"Dead matter becomes magic."
"They call me Duchemin."
"Not to be,Or else play.That's the dillemma."
"He pronounced only rare wordsMaybe he didn't speak at all."
"I found what I didn't know was what I was looking for."
Imagine if you mixed Godard, with abstract visuals and an incredibly nihilistic message, if you did, Eden and After would be the product.
THE STORY
Eden And After follows a group of french students, and Duchimen. The group of students, bored with their studios and laborous lives, take pleasure after class in a cafe called Eden, where they perform bizzarre rituals and games, which include a spiritual reconstruction of russian roulette, and a dramatic yet insane recreation of one of them being poisoned to death.
On one evening, the before named Duchemin arrives at cafe Eden, and engages them in magic tricks. He asks one of the group's member to pick up shards of glass of the floor, and miraculously heals the scars on her hand instantaneously. After showing the group his trick, he then offers a drug he names 'fear powder', and Violette accepts. She is then sent into a whirlpool of torture and murder, however shortly after returning back to reality, begins compulsively bursting out in laughter.
After this strange encounter, Violette agrees to meet Duchemin later that night at an abandoned factory, where she gets losts in the labyrinth. After suffering a series of hallucinations at said factory, she exits the factory the next morning and discovers Duchemin dead at the foot of a staircase, and finds a Tunisian postcard in his pocket.
When she returns home, she finds out that a valuable painting in her house was stolen, and she flees to Tunisia, where she finds Dutchman, Duchemin's doppelganger, and they become lovers.
A group of thugs who may or may not be the students she was with, at Eden, kidnap Violette. The thugs then begin to subject her to pyschological, sexual, and physical torture.
This is all you really need to know and the most I could really say about the plot before it borders spoilers and besides that, you should definitely watch this.
ANALYSIS
The story shows the group of french students, who are essentially You, or humanity as a whole. The film talks about how life is inherently nonsensical, and about how it is nihilistically boring.
Eden, is most infamously know as, The Garden Of Eden, where in the bible both Adam and Eve lived in perfect blissful happiness before they ate the apple from the tree of knowledge, which then resulted in them being banished from said place.
The reason the cafe is named Eden, is because it is the students own personal Garden Of Eden, where they can perform upon their sadistic and strange yet comforting (for them), in an attempt to ignore or remove the boredom from their life however, from the quote '"How was it? Average.", we can tell that their attempts to spice up their life is not exactly succesful.
Another interpretation of Eden And After is that its a heavily stylised reinterpretation of the lives of Adam And Eve, where the Cafe symbolises The garden, Tunisia represents the chaotic nature of earth, and the thugs represent the sadomasochism of sin and man in general.
A more realistic interpretation is that, Eden and France are a portrayal of a lacklustre and work oriented life, while Tunisia is the chaotic and 'crazy' world and reality that the students desire.
In this interpretation, the doppelgangers show the difference and contrast of how the main characters would act in the two seperate realities, where Duchimen is a magician and a almost messiah to the students in France, where else in Tunisia he is a free man who explores love. Violette is a bored mathematics student in France, but in tunisia she is kidnapped by thugs and tortured, releasing an almost hidden desire for pain and intense feeling, shown through her captives acts to sadochism.
FINAL THOUGHTS
An incredible film, and my last film of the summer break, Eden and after perfects filmmaking and storytelling in general, with its experimental non linear and non scripted story, bizarre and abstract visuals, and psychosexual allegories.
Thank you for reading this review and please like it.
100/100Quirky, Bizzarre and Surreal Storytelling, A list of my favourite 'weird films'
