eden movie review 2015

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What becomes clear pretty early on in Mia Hansen-Love 's "Eden" is that despite the large roving ensemble of ravers and DJs and partiers, and despite the fact that there is a lead character, the dance-club "scene" is the real star of the film. "Eden" is an ode to French house-music (known as the "French touch"), and a portrait of the kids so inspired by DJ Larry Levan and the sound he developed at Paradise Garage that following his lead became not only a lifestyle-choice but a philosophy. The scene changes over time, starting out with underground raves in abandoned warehouses or old docked submarines, and morphing into parties at gigantic nightclubs with a velvet-rope policy at the door. "Eden" is long, but Hansen-Love's style is so observant and specific that it is always a compelling watch and ends up being sneakily profound. It also features one of the best soundtracks in recent memory, a history lesson of club music. The film is quite personal, despite its slow and insistent historical sweep, and it's co-written by Hansen-Love with her brother Sven, based on his experiences as a DJ in the French house scene. 

"Eden" focuses on one kid, Paul ( Félix de Givry ), a university student obsessed with "Garage" music, and blowing off his dissertation because of his party schedule. He wants to be a DJ, and hangs around the DJ-tables at raves, asking questions, bonding over music. The DJ is the rock-star, powerful and glamorous. Paul's mother does not understand what her son is doing with his life. But Paul is devoted to music, and knows the kind of sound he wants to create, a mixture of "euphoria and melancholia." He has a partner in this pursuit, and they create themselves as a DJ duo called "Cheers," modeled in part on their idols, Daft Punk (who appear as themselves throughout the movie in a running gag where they try to get into clubs and nobody recognizes them).  

If you remember the early-1990s rave scene, Hansen-Love's film will ring so true. Teenagers, through word of mouth, or cryptic messages placed in the back pages of fanzines, gathered in out-of-the-way places, often armed with secret passwords for entry, and got "lost in the music." Ecstasy rose as the drug of choice, bringing with it its famous warm-fuzzy feelings (as opposed to the more selfish high from cocaine in the '70s and '80s). You had to know where the party was. You sought it out. Over time, house music rose in influence, sweeping the world, and the DJs who started out spinning records at illegal raves in dilapidated abandoned buildings began to get better-paying gigs at high-class joints in places like St. Tropez. Hansen-Love is very interested in people, but she is more interested in the larger movement of their lives, and how time pushes them along and changes them (or doesn't).

Surrounding Paul is a large ensemble of good friends, and we get to know them almost by osmosis, typical of Hansen-Love's subtle approach. There's Arnaud ( Vincent Macaigne ), hilarious and bitter, haranguing his friends repeatedly about " Showgirls ," screaming that it is a masterpiece and why won't they get that? There's Louise ( Pauline Etienne ), a sweet and supportive party girl, who dates Paul for a couple of years. Their relationship is intimate and intense. Cyril ( Roman Kolinka ) is an artist, working on a comic book, creating posters for Paul's DJ career, and battling depression. "Living at night depresses me," he says. Other people come and go. They enter the scene, and they leave it. Throughout "Eden," Mia Hansen-Love features different long takes where she follows a character through a rave, or a club, or a dance-party, through the gyrating thrashing throngs, the neon and the darkness pulsing through the frame along with the music. The scenes repeat. Denis Lenoir's cinematography is beautiful, evoking the eternal nature of the dance-club scene and yet sensitive to its nuanced changes, how it moved from DIY to corporate. 

Hansen-Love's films (four features thus far) are "about" many things—first love, family life, suicide, drug addiction—but the plot is not paramount. " Goodbye First Love " told the story of a young girl's first romantic experience, and Hansen-Love observed from a distance. It's not a cold style, just uninterested in the common use of catharsis, melodrama or even plot. " The Father of My Children " was about a busy film producer with a loving family, who puts a bullet in his head when his business starts to implode. In that film, Hansen-Love stays with the family in the aftermath of the tragedy, watching how they adjust and deal with the financial and emotional chaos he left behind. She continues to watch and look when other filmmakers, interested only in the plot, turn away. Her films bring with them a feeling of the relentless and heavy push of time itself. How do we "get over" things? Well, it takes time. Time does not heal all wounds, but it does change our relationship to painful events. Paul experiences that in "Eden" when he meets up with an American ex-girlfriend (an awkward and sweet Greta Gerwig ) years later when he DJs a party at P.S. 1 in New York. There is a poignancy in their encounter, a sense of a road not taken, but the sharpness of the initial pain has lessened. Time has done its work, off-screen. This is a hard quality to capture on film, although we all know it from real-life, and Hansen-Love accomplishes it repeatedly.

She devotes herself, methodically, to what her characters do, refusing to zoom in, so to speak, on the highs/lows of emotion. Those highs/lows exist, but they are not lingered over, or fetishized. There's almost a George Eliot quality to her work. George Eliot's novels often give the impression of an omniscient narrator sitting on a cloud, staring down at the pain and anxiety of human life; that distance provides the perspective necessary to tell the story. Paul's journey in "Eden" features many elements, creating a tapestry of one man's life: the inappropriate women he dates, the financial debt he piles up, family problems, drug problems, good times with friends, sweet moments with women he loves. 

The acting in "Eden" is naturalistic and spontaneous. "Eden" takes place over 20 years, and, except for haircuts and facial hair, nobody visibly ages. Hansen-Love is interested in things other than being "realistic". ("Goodbye First Love" had the same disinterest in "aging" the actors). The group scenes with Paul and his friends are wonderful, thrusting us into their familiar dynamic, the jokes, the philosophical conversations, the way everyone speaks over everyone else. Like the dance-club "scene," this group feels real. Hansen-Love has a great eye for detail. Watch for the expression on the harassed waiter's face when someone in the group orders an "apple juice" at 4 in the morning. Or the hilarious section when Paul dates a woman only interested in him because he is a DJ "name," stringing him along in a sexless relationship for a couple of years, hoping she'll find someone better. That character only appears in two scenes (such is the sweep of time covered in "Eden"), but the script is so efficient, so specific, that we get the entire picture in a couple of snapshots.

In lieu of a traditional plot, Hansen-Love brings us not only a whole world, but an entire era. The length of "Eden" is admittedly taxing at times, but Hansen-Love's disinterest in traditional plotting, her disregard for the "norms" of story-telling is why it is unique, and why it is so relevant and fresh.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Eden (2015)

Rated R for drug use, language and some sexuality/nudity

131 minutes

Félix de Givry as Paul

Brady Corbet as Larry

Greta Gerwig as Julia

Arsinée Khanjian as La mère de Paul

Pauline Étienne as Louise

• Mia Hansen-Løve
• Sven Hansen-Løve

Cinematography

• Denis Lenoir

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Movie Review: Eden Is Long and Unfocused, But It Mostly Works Anyway

Mia Hansen-Løve’s potently amorphous music drama  Eden  follows Paul (Félix De Givry), a French electronic dance DJ, over two decades, and you could be forgiven for finding his 131-minute odyssey wandering, unfocused, and overlong. The defense admits that Hansen-Løve is militantly casual in how she tells Paul’s story, and that the way the movie skips from dance space to dance space, track to track, and love affair to love affair can leave you wondering if there’s any “there” there. Who is this man? What does he do for a living again? But Hansen-Løve — like her partner, Olivier Assayas in  Summer Hours  and  The Clouds of Sils Maria  — has a near-supernatural instinct for finding the right form (and degree of formlessness) to induce a sense of transience, of something being lost before it even fully registers. Her last film was called  Goodbye, First Love , and  Eden  is another long, long good-bye.

Hansen-Løve does tip her hand on the subject of loss with the title, no? Eden is the name of a local music scene magazine (glimpsed briefly), but it also denotes the paradise in which Paul — who’s based on Hansen-Løve’s brother, Sven, with whom she wrote the script — finds himself when he’s in, literally, the groove. His religion is “New York Garage with a Parisian twist … like House but more disco.” Early in the film, he enters a tunnel and moves toward the source of the music, his body visible only between strobes, the electro beats at once arousing and relaxing — hypnotizing. He and his buddy, a high-strung illustrator named Cyril (Roman Kolinka), create a duo called “Cheers,” becoming famous for the magical “French touch.” Despite the efforts of a swinging radio guru named Arnaud (Vincent Macaigne), they don’t see much money. But it’s clear that spinning vinyl records makes Paul feel a kind of centripetal force, as if he’s pulling the world into his orbit.

I think the triumph of the film itself is its centrifugal force, its dispersed palette, its constant movement away from a center — the reverse direction of those records on Paul’s Technics turntable. The first of his girlfriends is in the process of leaving him before we even see them together. She’s an American named Julia, played by Greta Gerwig in a hard, low-voiced style I find a huge relief from her usual ditheriness. Julia thinks of Paul as the little French boy with whom she’s spending wonderful time before she has to go back to New York and grow up. The hole she leaves is eventually filled by Louise (Pauline Etienne), a sprightly, short-haired gamine who’s happy to follow Paul from gig to gig in lieu of working. But impermanence eats at her, too. Cyril, the other half of Cheers, is more and more angry and out of sorts, both sublimating and wallowing in his despair with a series of illustrations for a book he calls Song of the Machine . Paul’s mother (Arsinee Khanjian) sounds grim warnings about the real world on which Paul is turning his back, as well as his dwindling finances. But it will be a while in Eden before there’s any sense of urgency.

For most of the film, Hansen-Løve’s tempo is glancing, her eye restless. She’ll settle for a while on Paul and his friends as they throw back drinks or snort cocaine and then move on, the soundtrack picking you up and fuzzing you out. What do we hear? Most prominently Daft Punk, who are also characters in the film (played by actors) in a running joke in which they keep being denied entrance to clubs. (Paul thinks the duo is going nowhere.) My press kit lists 42 separate tracks by the likes of Arnold Jarvis, Juliet Roberts, MK, and the Style Council. The throbbing, floating, omnipresent music — inducing dreaminess, transcendence — is a counterpoint to the increasingly stark economics of Paul’s life. As tastes change and the crowd moves on, he finds himself addicted, in nightmarish debt, and alone. And at last Hansen Løve gives us our narrative bearings.

In one respect, it’s too little too late: De Givry (who was also in Assayas’s Something in the Air ) is a non-actor, handsome, serious, and comfortable being observed but never particularly expressive. That’s obviously what Hansen Løve wanted, but I can’t help thinking the movie’s amorphousness would have worked better with a more definite actor — someone who didn’t disappear so fully into the scene. Eden has a remarkable orbit, but it spins around a void.

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Review: Best to vote the hackneyed ‘Eden’ off the island

Nate Parker plays Slim in “Eden.”

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“Survivor” meets “Lost” and “Lord of the Flies” in the new movie “Eden,” a strictly by-the-numbers psychodrama about a plane full of American soccer players that crashes off an uninhabited Malaysian island.

Returning home from a World Cup match, U.S. team captain Slim (Nate Parker) has his fear of flying validated when the players’ chartered plane plunges into the Pacific, killing 22.

For Slim and the other dozen or so survivors, decompression sickness and a diminishing water supply prove to be the least of their worries as mounting suspicions and paranoia take their toll, especially on teammate Andy (Ethan Peck, Gregory’s grandson).

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Commercial director Shyam Madiraju, making his feature debut, demonstrates a spare, sinewy visual grip on the low-budget film, especially during that crash sequence. But the mechanical script strands a capable young cast in a sea of hackneyed character types and soggy platitudes.

It would have been nice if the story’s two surviving female castaways (played by Jessica Lowndes and Nicole Pedra) had been given a greater purpose than simply providing sexual tension/relief among the players.

By the time good-guy Slim and the increasingly crazed Andy finally face off in an inevitable alpha male smackdown, the viewer will long ago have wished to have been voted off the island.

-----------------------

MPAA rating: R for violence, language, some sexuality.

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

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Eden review – like Flaubert remixed at 130bpm

Mia Hansen-Løve recreates the heady rush of 90s Paris clubland in an evocative essay on youth and experience

O h, to have been young and French at the dawn of the Parisian house music scene , when Daft Punk were but a glint on a robot’s headpiece. Eden is a fictionalised account of those days from Mia Hansen-Løve, based on the experiences of her brother and co-writer Sven Hansen-Løve, a DJ and scenester reincarnated here as Paul (Félix de Givry). Much more expansive than Hansen-Løve’s previous pieces ( Father of My Children , Goodbye First Love ), Eden spans 20 years and depicts a life as exalted as the title suggests. Even viewers not initiated in techno and garage arcana are likely to yield to the swimmy rush mustered by the film and its bustling soundtrack.

It’s a tender film with a piquant thread of humour – a running gag has the two dweeby types who became Daft Punk (played by Vincent Lacoste and Arnaud Azoulay) turned away at clubs because no one believes it’s them. But rather than focusing on these hitmakers, Eden is about the kids who stayed up all night but didn’t get lucky, brought down to earth by the harsher realities of the life ecstatic.

Eden has the classic feel of a French generational portrait – its characters, almost exclusively white and middle-class, could be the same studious idealists seen in other films engaging in Marxist debate or arguing over Cahiers du Cinéma. It’s hardly even: Greta Gerwig contributes a very shaky cameo, while spiky up-and-comer Pauline Etienne makes more of a mark than the dour de Givry. There’s little narrative as such; characters come and go without ceremony; the action skips years at a time, seemingly at random. But that’s part of Eden ’s magic: it evokes the thrill of losing yourself as time speeds on, with little regard for the reality principle. It’s a beautiful, evocative essay on youth and experience, like Flaubert’s Sentimental Education remixed at 130bpm.

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• Dance music
• Paris, je t'aime

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Review: ‘Eden’ Is A Gripping Sex Slavery Drama That Isn’t As Dour As It Sounds

Drew taylor.

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Often the problem when making an ‘issue’ movie, wherein you tackle some far-reaching social, systemic, or religious injustice, is that scope often becomes too burdensome, with the given topic often begging for thoughtful, intimate conversation and not the broad strokes that cinema offers. The best issue movies, things like Steven Soderbergh ‘s multi-layered “ Traffic ,” make the central concern seem both universal and incredibly personal, often setting aside crass moralization (the stuff “ Crash ” was mired in – hey, racism still exists, everybody!) for actual entertainment. “ Eden ,” the Narrative Feature winner at SXSW in 2012, similarly tackles the issue of sex slavery, but it does so in a way that never feels too clumsy or overarching. Instead, it’s a character study with thriller elements; it exposes you to a horrible underworld without ever beating you over the head with it.

The movie starts with us meeting Hyun Jae (former MTV personality Jamie Chung ), a Korean-American who works in her parents’ taxidermy shop in New Mexico. One night she goes out with a friend and meets a nice firefighter. She decides to ride home with him, but while stopped at a gas station she looks in his back seat and sees a number of uniforms for different professions. It’s a great “oh shit” moment, followed by a sequence that introduces Beau Bridges as Bob Gault, a U.S. marshal who is called to the scene of a dead body. The body is of a young girl, who has some kind of ankle bracelet. Gault asks the young policeman and the rancher who found the girl if they had told anyone else about this. They say no; so Gault shoots them both. These two sequences, back to back, are horrifying and incredibly suspenseful and they do a great job setting the tone for the movie. “Eden” may be a movie about the big issue of sex slavery, but it’s savvy enough to play like a thriller (more than once you’ll be reminded of 2011’s terrific, thematically similar Mexican film “ Miss Bala “).

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Once Jae wakes up, she’s in a sex slave compound somewhere near Las Vegas. It’s a sterile warehouse, populated by young girls (mostly underage) in virginal cream-colored underwear, lorded over by Gault and his crack-smoking number two, Jesse ( Matt O’Leary , menacing and oddly funny). Girls are lined up in bunkers and checked for disease and illness and Jae is drugged and her braces are forcibly removed by someone we’re fairly sure doesn’t have an orthodontic license. This nuts-and-bolts approach to the world of sex slave trade eases you into the situation while most movies by this point would already have a metaphoric bright neon sign that said “ISN’T THIS AWFUL”? And it’s a testament to the strength of Chung’s performance, which justifiably earned her a Special Jury prize, that you go along with it completely. She’s wide-eyed and confused and so are we. She’s new to the situation, so we absorb the entire experience through her. If a lesser actress had filled the role, it would have been all weepy eyes and histrionics. Instead, she tries to approach the situation clinically, as if saying, “What have I gotten myself into and how the fuck am I going to get myself out?”

After going on a disastrous “date” with Jae (now dubbed Eden by her captors, after the trailer park where she lived in New Mexico), during which she bites the member off her client and attempts to escape through the neighborhood, we flash ahead a year. Eden is still in the facility, still being examined. But she’s determined now, steely, and is starting to understand the ins and outs of the company. Jesse likes to tell her that it’s a well-organized machine, but she makes note that during their last gig he was being scammed. So he takes her under his wing, forming an uneasy alliance, eventually pulling her out of the “field” and having her work an office job, answering calls from clients and occasionally going out with him to make sure the bookkeeping is straight. In a way this is even worse, because Eden is forced to watch, at a distance, as women she knows and has become friends with, are disposed of or even impregnated for the purposes of selling off their babies.

“Eden,” co-written (with Richard B. Phillips ) and directed by Megan Griffiths , is based on a true story (by Chong Kim ), and is nothing short of gripping. Maybe it’s more palpable because a cursory Google search can turn up details about the real-life incident, we know that it has a fairly happy ending (if you can call it that), but it mostly has to do with Griffiths’ staging of the events, which never veer into uncomfortable exploitation. Truthfully, there’s a shockingly small amount of sex and even less nudity. Maybe more of that stuff would have added texture, but it also could have also bordered on the tastelessly titillating. Instead, Griffiths sticks with the thriller approach, and it works well. There’s limited coverage of the Beau Bridges storyline, with just enough backstory given to the Jesse character (one of his comical/villainous threats: “I’m going to douse you in gasoline and light the fuse”). We’re with Eden almost the entire time and get to know the sex slave farm with the intimacy that she does. “Eden” is remarkably streamlined, too. It’s a period piece of sorts, taking place in the mid-1990s, so it’s free of technological clutter, instead letting us focus on Eden and her single goal – to get free.

Some might argue with the movie’s lack of context, but for an issue movie it’s remarkably small and personal. It’s telling the story of a single survivor and not the entire sex slave problem. And, again, it’s back to Chung – with her expressive eyes and her body language, which says so much, she’s able to fully inhabit the character. She even allows flashes of humor to shine through – while with a client she is forced to do a phony Asian accent that wouldn’t sound out of place on a ’70’s variety show. “I’m from China,” she purrs. Her client asks, “Oh really, what part of China?” He sounds genuinely interested and has probably traveled there on business. She shakes her head and says, “Just China.” It’s a moment of humor and humanity in a movie largely stripped of both. And it speaks to the power of Chung’s performance (and the movie itself). “Eden” may be unpleasant, but it’s not as grim as you’d imagine, and always compulsively watchable. If only all issue movies were this entertaining. [A-] 

This is a reprint of our review from the SXSW Film Festival 2012.

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2012, Crime/Drama, 1h 38m

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Critics Consensus

Led by Jamie Chung's powerful performance, Eden takes a complex and non-exploitative look at the experience of a woman trapped in the horrors of sex trafficking. Read critic reviews

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Eden   photos.

A Korean-American girl, abducted and forced into prostitution by human traffickers, has to agree to her captors' demands to survive.

Rating: R (Disturbing Violent Content|Disturbing Sexual Content|Drug Use|Human Trafficking|Language)

Genre: Crime, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Megan Griffiths

Producer: Jacob Mosler , Trent Broin , Colin Harper Plank

Writer: Megan Griffiths , Chong Kim , Richard B. Phillips

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 10, 2016

Runtime: 1h 38m

Production Co: Clatter & Din

Cast & Crew

Jamie Chung

Scott Mechlowicz

Mariana Klaveno

Beau Bridges

Matt O'Leary

Tantoo Cardinal

Tracey Fairaway

Naama Kates

Russell Hodgkinson

Laura Kai Chen

Ernie Joseph

Grace Arends

Demetrius Sager

Megan Griffiths

Screenwriter

Richard B. Phillips

Jacob Mosler

Trent Broin

Colin Harper Plank

Jeramy Koepping

Original Music

Joshua Morrison

Sean Porter

Cinematographer

Film Editing

Emily Schweber

Heidi Walker

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Critics Consensus: The Croods is Charming and Funny

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"New Age Gentleness"

What You Need To Know:

In EDEN, Helen (Joanna Going), a housewife in her late twenties who has multiple sclerosis, tutors a trouble-making high school boarder at her home with kindness and gentleness, in contrast to her teacher-husband Bill’s (Dylan Walsh) get-tough approach. Helen experiences vivid dreams as her disease debilitates her body more and more. One day, medics transport Helen to the hospital, where she lapses into a coma. Distraught, Bill realizes how much he needs Helen. Having always taken credit for Dave’s improvement, Bill can’t understand why his tough approach isn’t working anymore. Dave makes Bill see that it wasn’t his toughness which made a difference in his life; it was Helen’s tenderness. Bill finally realizes how selfish he has been and how he never fully appreciated Helen’s special qualities.

(PaPa, Fr, H, Ro, LL, S, M) Pagan worldview with humanistic, false religious & romantic elements of a woman stricken with multiple sclerosis who has out-of-body travel experiences; 19 obscenities, no profanities; no violence; implied sex between married couple; no nudity; and, New Age influences.

More Detail:

Set in the 1960s, EDEN depicts Helen (Joanna Going), a twenty-something teacher’s wife with terminal multiple sclerosis, who experiences vivid dreams as her disease debilitates her body more and more. Dave (Sean Patrick Flanery), a trouble-making student at Mt. Eden prep school, lives with Helen and her husband, Bill (Dylan Walsh), a teacher at Eden. She is at odds with Bill’s get-tough teaching approach with Dave and encourages Dave to study with gentleness and kindness, in contrast to Bill’s stern attitude. As Helen deteriorates, she experiences out-of-body travel.

EDEN begins as Helen feels frustration and unhappiness at her domineering husband’s strict approach to teaching Dave. Bill learned Eden’s tough prep-school teaching methods when he himself was a student there, and he uses the same methods on his students. Bill feels the pressure of Helen’s deteriorating illness and copes by trying to ignore it and by expecting her to “act tough” and pretend it isn’t there. He resents Helen’s reaching out to Dave, perceiving it as interfering with his teaching. What Bill doesn’t realize is how much he really needs her.

One day, medics transport Helen to the hospital, where she lapses into a coma. The doctor tells Bill he is not sure that she will come out of it. Distraught, Bill realizes how much he needs Helen. David is crushed at seeing Helen’s condition and begins to neglect his studies again. Having always taken credit for Dave’s improvement, Bill can’t understand why his tough approach isn’t working anymore. Dave makes Bill see that it wasn’t his toughness which made a difference in his life; it was Helen’s tenderness. Bill finally realizes how selfish he has been, and how he never fully appreciated Helen’s special qualities.

It is refreshing to see characters in a movie learn something from their behaviors and make healthy changes. Helen’s gentleness and encouragement are depicted as more valuable than Bill’s rigid, tough approach to life and to people. However, once Bill sheds his harsh exterior and begins to feel his pain, his heart begins to soften.

Joanna Going plays the part of Helen in a very convincing manner. Likewise, Dylan Walsh, who played Paul Newman’s son in NOBODY’S FOOL, plays the “get tough” Bill powerfully.

A problem with EDEN is Helen’s giving her out-of-body experiences New Age labels. Not having a Christian worldview, she attributes her experiences to astral projection, whereas it is common knowledge among medical doctors that patients struggling with debilitating diseases often experience flights of imagination as their body disassociates from their painful situation.

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Movie Review

True Story Inspires Tale of Sex Trade; in a Twist, a U.S. Marshal Is the Bad Guy

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By Stephen Holden

• March 19, 2013

Enough films about human trafficking have been made in recent years that the outlines of “Eden” should be painfully familiar. But that familiarity doesn’t cushion this movie’s excruciating vision of under-age women conscripted into sexual slavery by a criminal enterprise from which there is seemingly no escape.

You may call me naïve, but it is deeply upsetting that “Eden” is set in the United States and that the organization’s boss, Bob Gault (Beau Bridges), is a law-and-order-preaching United States marshal. We imagine this kind of crime flourishing in the shadows of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But in the United States, with a backslapping good old boy running the operation? Could it be?

The movie , directed by Megan Griffiths, is loosely based on the true story of Chong Kim, who was born in South Korea and moved to the United States as a toddler. As a teenager in the mid-1990s, she became a captive of the domestic sex trade. She eventually survived her ordeal and has become a crusader against human trafficking.

In the film she is a Korean-American teenager named Hyun Jae (Jamie Chung), who works in her parents’ New Mexico gift shop. She is picked up in a bar by a handsome, friendly young firefighter who offers her a ride home. Along the way, he makes a stop and exits the vehicle. Moments later she is kidnapped and drugged and has her identification and possessions confiscated.

Renamed Eden, she soon finds herself in a regiment of sex slaves, most of them immigrants, imprisoned under close guard in a converted storage facility. In a bizarre touch, each girl is given a tiny kitten to take care of.

The movie is frustratingly arbitrary in what it shows and what it leaves out. Although events are seen from Eden’s perspective, we are never given a clear picture of her daily routine. There is no nudity or explicit sex, although Eden’s clients — we see only two or three — graphically voice their demands.

Other sickening forms of brutalization are shown. The women are suspended from the ceiling and whipped. After an incident in which Eden viciously fights back a john and desperately tries to flee, she is handcuffed and thrown into a bathtub filled with ice cubes.

What human dimension there is concerns Eden’s ambiguous connection with Vaughan (Matt O’Leary), Gault’s bullied, drug-addicted assistant. He is a lost boy, and Eden solicits his trust by offering to help him in his various jobs. Before long they are de facto partners. He teaches her to drive his van, in which caged girls are ferried back and forth from the storage facility to a makeshift hospital and to bars where they are paraded before mostly white, middle-aged clients.

“Eden” leaves many details cloudy. We learn late in the film that the babies of the girls who become pregnant are sold. And it is suggested that by the age of 20, when a girl is considered to have outlived her commercial shelf life, she faces execution and burial in the desert. Shadowy international connections are referred to. At a certain point, the entire operation considers abruptly relocating to Dubai.

The movie is set in the kind of Southwestern outlaw territory found in the AMC series “Breaking Bad” and in “No Country for Old Men:” an arid, lawless no man’s land that looks as forbidding today as it did in the 19th century.

After watching “Eden,” you may worry that the cargo in any innocent-looking white van streaking down a highway may not be furniture and home appliances but a group of chained sex slaves being taken from one hell to another in a sadistic warlord’s fiendish underground network. That fantasy describes the residual chill the movie leaves behind. For the perpetrators in the film, human trafficking is no different from animal slaughter. It’s just business as usual.

“Eden” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has strong language, violence and sexual situations.

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Eden (2015) Stream and Watch Online

Watch 'Eden' Online

Need to watch ' Eden ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Discovering a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Shyam Madiraju-directed movie via subscription can be a huge pain, so we here at Moviefone want to do the work for you. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'Eden' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the various whats and wheres of how you can watch 'Eden' right now, here are some specifics about the Ombra Films, Perlapartment Pictures, Gobsmack, H&H Creative Ventures, Voltage Pictures drama flick. Released September 18th, 2015, 'Eden' stars Jessica Lowndes , Ethan Peck , Diego Boneta , Nate Parker The R movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 37 min, and received a user score of 52 (out of 100) on TMDb, which put together reviews from 57 top users. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "After their plane crashes off the coast of a deserted Pacific island, the surviving members of an American soccer team find themselves in the most dire of circumstances with limited resources, dwindling food supply and no rescue coming any time soon. Team spirit evaporates as disagreements cause the group to separate into factions - a violent one lead by an unbalanced ruler, and a compassionate one led by a selfless player." 'Eden' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Vudu, Amazon Video, The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, and VUDU Free .

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Zoe Saldaña Fights to Survive in 'The Absence of Eden' Trailer

The movie is directed by Marco Perego.

The Big Picture

• The Absence of Eden follows Zoe Saldaña's character on the run, showcasing themes of humanity and survival in a thrilling storyline.
• Set on the US-Mexico border, the movie explores the harsh reality faced by undocumented immigrants and refugees, offering a poignant commentary.
• With a talented team behind it, including Zoe Saldaña and Garrett Hedlund, The Absence of Eden promises an intense and emotional cinematic experience.

Zoe Saldaña is on the run in the new trailer of the upcoming feature The Absence of Eden . The movie marks the directorial debut of the actor’s husband Marco Perego, and revolves around themes of humanity and survival . The clip sees her as a private dancer who accidentally kills a mob boss and then goes on a run to protect herself and joins a group of undocumented immigrants going to America. The feature looks very thrilling and is unafraid to pull its punches and Saldaña seems to carry the movie high on emotions like a bonafide star.

The Absence of Eden is set in the backdrop of the border between the United States and Mexico. It’s a hellish landscape inhabited by coyotes, armed officers, desperate immigrants , and refugees, all alike. The movie follows a young woman, Esmee (Saldaña), working as a private dancer in Mexico, when she is forced to commit a violent act of self-defense, she has no option left but to run to America for safety . On this journey, guided by a ruthless Coyote, she befriends a young mother and her daughter, but things take a turn when before crossing the border, the mother is taken from the group, and Esmee promises to protect her daughter and help them reunite again in America.

The Team Behind ‘The Absence of Eden’

The feature is billed as an “interlocking story about people struggling to survive on America’s border with Mexico,” which makes a good commentary on the geopolitics of the region. Perego, who also produces, co-wrote the feature with scribe Rick Rapoza . The themes of the movie look quite intense as it takes a good look at humanity and survival instinct through the lens of undocumented immigrants.

Saldaña is coming fresh off the success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 , which marked the end of the trilogy of MCU’s favorite band of misfits. She recently appeared in films like James Cameron ’s long-awaited Avatar: The Way of Water , which blew away the audience again as well as the TV series Special Ops: Lioness , a Taylor Sheridan thriller, that was well-loved by fans and critics, alike. She’s supported in the cast by Garrett Hedlund , whose credits include Unbroken , Mudbound , Triple Frontier , The Marsh King's Daughter and more. The feature is executive produced by Martin Scorsese while Saldaña, Karl Herrmann , Robert Kravis , Alexandra Milchan , Perego, Julie Yorn , and Rick Yorn serves as producers.

The Absence of Eden will premiere this April. You can check out the new trailer above.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Spy x Family Code: White

After receiving an order to be replaced in Operation Strix, Loid decides to help Anya win a cooking competition at Eden Academy, by making the director's favorite meal in order to prevent hi... Read all After receiving an order to be replaced in Operation Strix, Loid decides to help Anya win a cooking competition at Eden Academy, by making the director's favorite meal in order to prevent his replacement. After receiving an order to be replaced in Operation Strix, Loid decides to help Anya win a cooking competition at Eden Academy, by making the director's favorite meal in order to prevent his replacement.

• Kazuhiro Furuhashi
• Ichirô Ôkouchi
• Tatsuya Endo
• Takuya Eguchi
• Atsumi Tanezaki
• Saori Hayami
• 3 User reviews
• 3 Critic reviews

• Loid Forger
• Anya Forger

• Bond Forger
• Franky Franklin

• Sylvia Sherwood
• (as Yuko Kaida)
• Henry Henderson
• Damian Desmond
• Becky Blackbell

• Fiona Frost
• (English version)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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User reviews 3

• LazerBlader
• Dec 23, 2023
• How long will Spy x Family Code: White be? Powered by Alexa
• April 19, 2024 (United States)
• Official Site (Japan)
• Official Twitter (Japan)
• Spy X Family Code: White
• CloverWorks
• TOHO animation
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $43,946,087

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 50 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• IMAX 6-Track

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Screen Rant

“that actually did happen”: oscar-winning spielberg movie gets high accuracy grade from cold war expert.

A Cold War expert discusses Steven Spielberg's 2015 historical film Bridge of Spies, which gets a glowing review for its historical accuracy.

• Cold War historian James Hershberg praises Bridge of Spies for its high accuracy in depicting the historic exchange of spies during the Cold War.
• Spielberg's attention to historical details in Bridge of Spies is commendable, earning the film an impressive 8/10 accuracy score from Hershberg.
• Despite being overshadowed by Spielberg's other historical films, Bridge of Spies received critical acclaim and multiple Oscar nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor.

Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies gets a high accuracy rating from an expert on Cold War history. Bridge of Spies is a 2015 historical drama about an American lawyer who is hired to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and help facilitate the exchange of said spy for American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers. Bridge of Spies features a leading cast of Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, and Amy Ryan.

Nearly a decade after the film’s release, Cold War historian James Hershberg speaks with Insider surrounding the accuracy of Bridge of Spies . To start off, Hershberg stated the argument that “ this is very accurate and faithful to the events ” on which the film is based.

The historian went on to break down specific scenes, including a scene wherein CIA agents confront Abel, and pointed to the relative adherence to the history of said scenes. Overall, Hershberg was impressed with the accuracy of the history depicted in Bridge of Spies , giving it an 8/10 score for accuracy. Check out the full analysis from Hershberg below:

As historical accuracy goes, this is very accurate and faithful to the events of the swap of Francis Gary Powers, the American U2 pilot, and the Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. The scene in which he gets a message inside a nickel is realistic, because that actually did happen although apparently the nickel got lost, and he lost track of it, and it was given to the police when a newspaper boy, you know, discovered it. I can’t verify that Abel was in his underpants, the agents had their guns drawn, and all of that. But, you know, he was arrested, um and you know, it was determined that, you know, he had been part of a ring. Generally, the Soviets were presumed and verified to have more human intelligence capabilities inside the United States than the US had in the Soviet Union. This was true, for example, of atomic intelligence. The Soviets were able to have a ring that included scientists associated with the Manhattan project. So, intelligence was a game that went on. But generally it was believed that the US tended to rely more on technology for intelligence. I think it really does reflect the historical events. It doesn’t have everything, for example it shows the shooting down of Powers’ U2 on May 1, 1960. It was not known until decades later that the Soviets also accidentally shot down one of their own planes that was chasing the U2, and killed the pilot, which was rather unfortunate. I don’t believe Powers ever claimed he was tortured persay, like the torture at Guantanamo or that kind of thing. But the idea of preventing sleep, that was not unrealistic. Prisoner exchanges were made. I wouldn’t call them common. You know, it was not unheard of when one side had something the other wanted, and the other side had something that could be exchanged, for there to be a negotiating process. I would give this scene an 8.

Bridge of Spies Fits Into Larger Spielberg Trends

Hershberg’s review of Bridge of Spies shows just how much care Spielberg and his teams put into making accurate historical narratives. Spielberg has had a wide-ranging filmography over the course of his decades-long career, but historical films have been a significant piece of his oeuvre. Said work has included The Post , Lincoln , and his tour-de-force Nazi drama Schindler’s List .

Bridge of Spies is currently available for $19.99 on Prime Video.

Bridge of Spies received ample recognition at the time of its release. The film received a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes among critics, and an also-impressive 87% approval rating among audiences. Bridge of Spies went on to be nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Production Design. It ended up winning Best Supporting Actor for Mark Rylance’s role as Rudolph Abel.

10 Gripping Spy Movies Based On Real Events

It is easy for Bridge of Spies to get forgotten within the Spielberg oeuvre . After all, the film was preceded by Lincoln , a far better historical narrative from Spielberg. Nonetheless, it is interesting to hear perspectives like Hershberg’s, who praise the film for its impeccable attention to historical details.

Source: Insider / YouTube

Bridge of Spies

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies follows American lawyer James Donovan, who is recruited by the CIA to negotiate the release of a U.S. Air Force pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union. Tom Hanks stars in the 2015 historical drama based on the true story.