80
Hansen-Love, who co-wrote the script along with her former-DJ brother Sven, zeroes in on the signature experiences of ’90s club life with expert precision.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
A sense of humour and nostalgia are both employed successfully to skirt the potential inertia of Paul's slowly declining career, and though de Givry's performance is quietly moving, one may have just hoped that Eden would get under its subject's skin a little bit more.
91
Portraying a generation so energized by possibilities that it was bound to be let down, Eden offers a wise assessment of the interplay between fantasy and reality on the path to adulthood. The seductive rhythms are a perfect match for a movie that analyzes the unstoppable flow of life.
83
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
A viewer is always aware that they are being shown a place and an era, which helps explain why Eden manages the tricky business of being a movie that is overtly about lost time, but which unfolds chronologically, without as much as a flashback.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Jon Frosch
This graceful, deeply affecting movie has a soulfulness and sweep that mark it as a step forward for Hansen-Løve.
83
The Playlist by Nikola Grozdanovic
This isn’t a story of success and fortune, but a slice of life with a personal rhythm and a universal beat.
80
Hansen-Løve has an acute eye for the details of Paul’s world. Glamour is twinned with mundanity, beauty with boorishness and friendship with selfishness, while artistic endeavour is undercut by self-indulgence.
70
It’s easier to tell the story of a smashing success or an utter failure, because there’s drama inherent to either scenario, but what Hansen-Løve accomplishes with Eden is trickier, a feeling of being adrift in a scene where people are already invited to lose themselves to dance.
90
Village Voice by Stephanie Zacharek
A quiet, raggedly beautiful mini-epic, Eden isn't a success story; it's a failure story. But it's also a glittering acknowledgement of the fact that failing is the only path toward growing.
75
Slant Magazine by Steve Macfarlane
Every substrata of music geekdom deserves a period piece as intimate as Eden, Mia Hansen-Løve's swan song for the golden era of French house music.