While Daft Punk center heavily in this new trailer for “Eden,” filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s fourth feature effort, there were many other fondly remembered groups from the ‘90s French House explosion. There was Dimitri from Paris, Cassius Stardust, Alan Braxe & Fred Falke, Mr. Oizo, DJ Falcon and the American Felix da Housecat really took off in Europe during that era. Those acts were each successful in one way or another, but there were some that never broke out of obscurity, and that’s part of the story of Hansen-Løve’s new film.
The director experienced the scene first hand because her brother Sven Hansen-Love was an upcoming DJ therein and cowrote the movie, a loveletter to that era. “[Sven] was part of a group who did residencies at the Queen club in Paris and out of that came Daft Punk and that whole French house movement,” the director told the Guardian in 2012 as she was putting the film together. “It was a huge chunk of my life. So I’m trying to use that era to tell a big love story, but the music rights alone are costing half a million euros, and I need lots of crowd scenes and to hire big nightclubs, so it’s getting very expensive.”
Well, she got the film made and she seems like she cleared those music licenses. Here’s the official synopsis:
The fourth feature from Mia Hansen-Løve (Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love) is a rare achievement: an epically scaled work built on the purely ephemeral, breathlessly floating along on currents of feeling. Eden is based on the experiences of Hansen-Løve’s brother (and co-writer) Sven, who was one of the pioneering DJs of the French rave scene in the early 1990s. Paul (Félix de Givry) and his friends, including Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter (otherwise known as Daft Punk), see visions of ecstasy in garage music-as their raves become more and more popular, they experience a grand democracy of pure bliss extending into infinity, only to dematerialize on contact with changing times and the demands of everyday life. Hansen-Løve’s film plays in the mind as a swirl of beautiful faces and bodies, impulsive movements, rushes of cascading light and color (lensed by the great cameraman, Denis Lenoir), and music, music, and more music. Eden is a film that moves with the heartbeat of youth.
“Eden” Stars Felix de Givry, Hugo Conzelmann, Pauline Etienne, Vincent Macaigne, Vincent Lacoste and Arnaud Azoulay (evidently playing Daft Punk) and also features Greta Gerwig and Brady Corbet. The movie will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival later this weekand will also screen at the New York Film Festival in October. Watch the trailer below.