Eden 2014

Wesley Morris, Grantland: The years in this movie don't really amount to much. It's stuck between disco shallowness and grown-up wisdom -- like a turntable, it's spinning endlessly. Read more

Andrew Barker, Variety: 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. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: An intimate epic to sink into; it uses the unchanging age of its actors, whose characters stubbornly resist changing for two decades, as a melancholy commentary on the maturation process. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: A viewer is always aware that they are being shown a place and an era, which helps explain how 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. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: Perhaps what Hansen-Love lacks is perspective. The movie runs a very long two hours and 11 minutes, and the excess is easily felt. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: Hansen-Love has entered the solipsistic time-space continuum of an artistic sensibility and let us in for the ride of a lifetime. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: The camerawork is so fluid and the settings so brimming with detail that one feels washed away by the film, recognizing the hero's decline only when he does-that is, too late. Read more

Jon Frosch, Hollywood Reporter: Eden is indeed as low-key as anything Hansen-Love has done, though it conveys a sense of risk that feels new for her -- both in the scope of the story and in specific choices she makes. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Hansen-Love is an assured and naturally empathetic director who specializes in making us care more about her characters than seems likely at the outset. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: If the result feels anesthetized, that could be seen as a tribute to the music, which remains ecstatically dull; when you are lost in it, the movie implies, the rest of life -- and even time itself -- can pass you by. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: A subtle portrait of an EDM Adam, Eden is neither a star-is-born fable nor a soul-is-lost parable. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: Perceptive and compassionate, "Eden" recognizes how the thrill of artistic freedom can curdle in the heat of the marketplace and the demands of daily life. Yet the movie's refusal to foster regret, or have Paul repudiate his passion, is telling. Read more

Molly Eichel, Philadelphia Inquirer: Eden is the kind of movie that hits you when you least expect it. Just when I thought it was a mess, its aimlessness began to make complete sense. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: While Hansen-Love hits the major chords in Paul's life effectively and creates a sense of time expanding before collapsing into memory, the truth is "Eden" is often tiring to sit through. Read more

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle: This film easily could have been 30 minutes shorter. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: In the realm of disco lights and thumping bass lines, mounting debt, hungover mornings and interchangeable sleeping partners, there's a real love story here about a man and his passion for his loops and beats. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Eden finds paradise where it counts: right between the ears. Read more

Christopher Tarantino, Time Out: At one point, Paul describes his music as "somewhere between euphoria and melancholy," which is also an apt description of Eden itself. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: Even if you know nothing about techno, let alone garage, Hansen-Love's exploration of the ways music can nourish you or swallow you whole is instantly, perhaps painfully, recognizable. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: 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. Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: "Eden" serves as a time capsule, giving us some sense of what it feels like to be in the midst of a musical high. Read more