Eden and After

1970 mind twister

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Some 20-somethings find themselves in a bit of trouble after ingesting a stranger's fear powder.

This twisty mind warper of a movie from the perverse mind of Alain Robbe-Grillet is really nothing more than anti-fear powder propaganda. And I have to say--like a lot of anti-drug movies, this one only makes me want to experiment with fear powder. This is a fun sort of nightmare, and there's always nudity right around the corner. At the very least, there's women like Catherine Jourdan in a short little skirt.

Those late-60's Europeans sure liked their playful opening credits, didn't they? This one has spoken opening credits over shots of a dull house and shots within a factory. There are also random words that I probably should have paid attention to because they might be a key to help unravel the nonsense within this kinky little movie puzzle.

The action opens in a colorful and sligtly rapey funhouse club that seems to be run by a butler named Franz. Franz is oddly postured. Math and Russian roulette probability discourse shows these 20-somethings as just bored enough to try out a mysterious stranger's fear powder. There are recurring images and themes--blood, the idea of doubles, paintings, doors, and prisons--but it doesn't add up to anything that I understood one bit, and the narrative is too disjointed to make much sense either. Robbe-Grillet actually made a second movie out of Eden and After by adding some footage and shuffling everything around, so it's safe to say that creating a solid narrative wasn't something he was all that concerned with. That's called N. Took the Dice, and I guess I'll see that sometime, too, because I can't get enough of Catherine Jourdan and her legs.

A while back, I made a list of museum movies, a collection of movies that I think could be projected on a wall at a museum, sometimes because the visuals are more important than the stories. This would be a good candidate for a list like that.

There's a great death scene with poisoned Boris, not really a spoiler at all since this isn't the kind of movie where the death of a character sticks or even matters. There's also a terrifically fun musical number where everyday objects are used as percussion instruments.