Eden and After
Slovak theatrical release poster
Directed byAlain Robbe-Grillet
Story byAlain Robbe-Grillet
Produced bySamy Halfon[1]
StarringCatherine Jourdan
Pierre Zimmer
Juraj Kukura
Catherine Robbe-Grillet
CinematographyIgor Luther[2]
Edited byBob Wade[1]
Music byMichel Fano[1]
Distributed byPlan Film (France)[1]
Mundial Films (USA)[1]
Release date
  • 20 April 1970 (1970-04-20) (France)
Running time
100 minutes[1]
Countries
Languages
  • French
  • Slovak

Eden and After (French: L'Eden et après, Slovak: Eden a potom...) is a 1970 French-Czechoslovak drama art film[3] directed by French novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival.[4]

Plot

The film opens with words such as "object", "game", "blood" and "rape" shown intercut with the credits. A group of university students meet after class at a bar called Eden, where, amidst reproductions of Piet Mondrian's abstract paintings, they play various games—a simulated Russian roulette or pretending that one of them is poisoned, for example. Among these young people is Violette, who is the film's protagonist.

One evening a stranger named Duchemin enters the bar and engages the students in games of magic tricks: he asks one of them to pick up broken glass pieces, then "heals" their bloody cut wounds—a trick he learned in Africa, he says. Violette takes a drug called "fear powder" offered by him and hallucinates, frightened at first but soon bursts out laughing. She agrees to meet Duchemin later at night in an abandoned factory, where she gets lost upon arrival. After going through a series of hallucinatory visions, which includes a semen-like substance oozing from a factory pipe, she manages to escape the factory next morning. Duchemin is found dead at the foot of a staircase overlooking the nearby canal. She finds a postcard from Tunisia in his pocket.

Returning home, she discovers that she has been robbed of a valuable painting. She leaves for Tunisia, where she meets a sculptor named Dutchman, who has the same appearance as Duchemin, and she becomes his lover. She is then kidnapped by a gang of young men wearing turbans, played by some of her fellow students she befriended at Eden. Imprisoned and subjected to torture, she manages to free herself with the help of a girl who resembles her—perhaps her doppelgänger—and recovers the painting. Soon afterward Violette finds Dutchman dead at the foot of a staircase by the sea, which reminds her of the place where she found Duchemin's body earlier.

Back home, Violette narrates that nothing has happened yet or perhaps everything was just a fantasy, hallucination, or premonitory dream of hers.

Cast

Voice actors for the Slovak release
  • Ida Rapaičová as Violette/Viola
  • Slavo Drozd as Duchemin/Durman
  • Božidara Turzonovová as Marie-Eve/Mária
  • Ivan Krajíček as Marc-Antoine/Mikuláš
  • Peter Mikulík as Jean-Pierre/Róbert

Production

Robbe-Grillet's 1968 film The Man Who Lies, which was shot in black-and-white like all the previous films he had directed, performed poorly at the box office.[5] Robbe-Grillet told an acquaintance that he was considering to quit filmmaking because making films in black-and-white was, he felt, no longer possible.[6]

There was no detailed script for the film.[7] Instead, Robbe-Grillet came up with the idea that he could create a story using the system Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg used in his twelve-tone music,[7] constructing the film's plot with ten sets of twelve themes arranged in a different order for each set.[8] The result was, according to Robbe-Grillet, a mixture of Marquis de Sade's Justine and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with certain elements taken from the chivalric romance.[1] With no written details to rely on, Robbe-Grillet had to discuss the film's each shot and scene at depth with the cinematographer, Igor Luther, which granted Luther significant creative control over the film.[2]

Robbe-Grillet hired mostly unknown actors since well-established ones would not work for a film without a proper script.[7] The actors were informed very little about the film beforehand; only that it was to be shot in Czechoslovakia and Djerba, Tunisia.[7]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Van Wert, William F. (1977). The Film Career of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Redgrave Publishing Company. p. 35. ISBN 9780913178591. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via Internet Archive.
  2. 1 2 Fragola, Anthony N.; Smith, Roch C. (1992). The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 58. ISBN 9780809317981. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via Internet Archive.
  3. ↑ Jane, Ian. "Eden and After (Blu-ray)". DVD Talk. Retrieved 13 March 2017. absolutely worth seeing for fans of Robbe-Grillet's style or French arthouse filmmaking in general... It's certainly not a movie for all tastes but those who appreciate oddball arthouse efforts with a bit of sex appeal should enjoy it
  4. ↑ "IMDB.com: Awards for Eden and After". imdb.com. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
  5. ↑ Fragola, Anthony N.; Smith, Roch C. (1992). The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780809317981. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ↑ Van Wert, William F. (1977). The Film Career of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Redgrave Publishing Company. p. 16. ISBN 9780913178591. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via Internet Archive.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Fragola, Anthony N.; Smith, Roch C. (1992). The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 55. ISBN 9780809317981. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via Internet Archive.
  8. ↑ Van Wert, William F. (1977). The Film Career of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Redgrave Publishing Company. p. 34. ISBN 9780913178591. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via Internet Archive.
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