Eden

Certificate: 15
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
Studio: CG Cinéma, France 2 Cinéma, Blue Film Production, Yundal Films

Can you feel it? At last, the essence of house music is captured on celluloid.

As the camera pans to a column of irrepressibly cool Parisians shuffling home after a subterranean rave, Eden captures the bittersweet jaded end of a party that inevitably, sadly, had to end.

It’s one of a handful of beautiful, romanticised moments in a film about the French capital’s seminal house and garage movement through the early to mid 1990s; told through the eyes of one its protagonists – DJ Paul Vallée (Félix de Givry).
Paul’s trajectory is based on the life of actual French house and garage DJ Sven Hansen-Løve. An epicurean who lived the scene’s hedonistic highs and wretched lows, Sven was among a band of entrepreneurial DJs and producers, which included Daft Punk in their burgeoning years, who organised legendary raves and subsequent legitimate club nights across Paris.
This talented batch of bon viveurs were inspired by the ‘house’ music that emerged from Chicago’s Warehouse nightclub in the late 1980s, and the ‘garage’ tunes that had blasted out of legendary DJ Larry Levan’s decks at the Paradise Garage, New York, during the same period. In the early 1990s Sven, Daft Punk and others including Etienne de Crecy, began creating and appling their French touch to this style of music, creating a new sub-genre in the process.

The script was co-written by Sven and his sister Mia, the film’s director, who has applied her own deft, authentic approach.

There’s a great moment when a much younger, sheepish Daft Punk play their first hit, Da Funk, for the first time at a house party and the camera tracks back – the duo are now more elusive, enigmatic – stars are born. Another quintessentially Gallic scene portrays the youngsters debating the political and social merits of Showgirls.

But more crucially, through the DJ sets of Paul and his ‘camarades’, Mia Hansen-Løve manages an extremely rare feat. She takes dance music seriously, draws out its sensitivities and pitches perfectly its ability to create euphoric shared experiences – whether you’re sober or intoxicated. House music is and can be just as vital to this generation as punk was to the class of 1977.

For many, Eden will conjure feelings just like those unearthed by the recent rebirth of TFI Friday. The first four bars of Kings of Tomorrow’s Finally, Joey Smooth’s Promised Land and Daft Punk’s One More Time will spark urges among many 30-somethings to succumb to their inner demons, get royally twatted and party like its 1998.

But the script is by no means flawless. Much like a (house) party, seemingly important characters emerge and disappear with little or no explanation and the plot veers lightly without a constant narrative thrust.

It’s a languid story at times and will test those who aren't particular fans of the music featured throughout.

Which brings to the soundtrack. From the opening Balearic bars of Derrick May’s blissful remix of Sueno Latino, through to Terry Hunter’s Your Love, the tunes will give audience’s shivers, leave them misty eyed for their youth and may well attract new converts.

Through an adroit choice of songs, a clear understanding and unassuming style, Mia Hansen-Løve has captured the true essence of house music itself – fleeting moments of pure joy.