''Eden and After'' (french: L'Eden et après, sk, Eden a potom...) is a 1970 French-Czechoslovak drama

art film An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

directed by French novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the

20th Berlin International Film Festival The 20th annual Berlin International Film Festival was supposed to be held from 26 June to 7 July 1970. The festival opened with ''Klann – grand guignol'' by Patrick Ledoux. However, on 5 July the competition was cancelled and no major prizes ...

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 Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...

'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 A doppelgänger (), a compound noun formed by combining the two nouns (double) and (walker or goer) (), doppelgaenger or doppelganger is a biologically unrelated look-alike, or a double, of a living person. In fiction and mythology, a doppelg ...

—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

Catherine Jourdan Catherine Jourdan (12 October 1948 – 18 February 2011) was a French actress. She appeared in 22 films and television shows between 1967 and 1989. She starred in the 1970 film '' Eden and After'', which was entered into the 20th Berlin Inte ...

as Violette *

Pierre Zimmer Pierre Zimmer (15 December 1927 – 22 May 2010) was a French actor and film director. He appeared in more than 30 films and television shows between 1966 and 2001. In 1962 he directed the film ''Give Me Ten Desperate Men'', which was entere ...

as Duchemin/Dutchman * Richard Leduc as Marc-Antoine * Lorraine Rainer as Marie-Eve * Sylvain Corthay as Jean-Pierre * Juraj Kukura as Boris * Jarmila Koleničová as Sona *

Catherine Robbe-Grillet Catherine Robbe-Grillet (; ''née'' Rstakian; born 24 September 1930) is a French writer, dominatrix, photographer, theatre and film actress of Armenian descent who has published sadomasochistic writings under the pseudonyms Jean de Berg and J ...

as Foolish woman * François Gervai * Ľudovít Kroner as Franc ;Voice actors for the Slovak release *

Ida Rapaičová Ida Rapaičová (born 22 August 1943 in Bratislava) is a Slovak actress and former politician. She graduated in acting from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in 1967. Since graduation, she has been an actress of the New Scene theatre. ...

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. 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. There was no detailed script for the film. Instead, Robbe-Grillet came up with the idea that he could create a story using the system Austrian-American composer

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

used in his twelve-tone music, constructing the film's plot with ten sets of twelve themes arranged in a different order for each set. The result was, according to Robbe-Grillet, a mixture of

Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer famous for his literary depictions of a libertine sexuality as well as numerous accusat ...

's '' Justine'' and

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...

's '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', with certain elements taken from the

chivalric romance As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric k ...

. With no written details to rely on, Robbe-Grillet had to discuss the film's each shot and scene at depth with the cinematographer, , which granted Luther significant creative control over the film. Robbe-Grillet hired mostly unknown actors since well-established ones would not work for a film without a proper script. The actors were informed very little about the film beforehand; only that it was to be shot in

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

and Djerba, Tunisia.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eden And After 1970 films 1970 drama films 1970 multilingual films 1970s French-language films Films directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet Films set in Tunisia French multilingual films Czechoslovak multilingual films French psychological drama films French avant-garde and experimental films Czechoslovak avant-garde and experimental films French drama films Slovak drama films Czechoslovak drama films 1970s French films