Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £6.99 a month
Eden and After
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s sensual fantasy follows a group of students who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic realm after taking a mysterious drug.
Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Overview
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first film in colour finds him audaciously marrying his theories of narrative experimentation with a highly sensual visual style to create one of his most distinctive works. It charts the descent into depravity of a group of bourgeois students, who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic desert realm after taking a mysterious drug called “fear powder”. As their realities distort and their interrelationships diverge into master-slave hierarchies, Robbe-Grillet’s narrative becomes ever more fractured and fevered.
Partially set in Tunisia, the film’s desert setting was in fact a key factor in the film’s genesis, with the country’s red and yellow desert hues convincing Robbe-Grillet he could finally make a film in colour, having previously expressed dissatisfaction with the way Eastmancolor stock conveyed the colour green. Drawing on an array of visual influences from Piet Mondrian to Marcel Duchamp and Paul Klee, Robbe-Grillet certainly found favour with his new palette (revelling especially in splashes of red blood), but it was arguably the theories of sonic adventurers that proved the most pertinent. The director was fascinated with the twelve-tone musical structures of August Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez, so he structured his plot as a series of twelve recurring themes rather than a conventional narrative. Despite the rather stiff-sounding theories and formal experiments that Robbe-Grillet adopts, the film is far from a dry exercise. A tactile and playful fantasy brimming with beautiful bodies and startling images, Eden and After is not so much a mystery to unravel but rather a narcotic, sensory experience to bathe in.
Contains strong sex and nudity
Related
Watership Down Watership Down
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1978 92 mins Director: Martin Rosen
An apocalyptic vision pushes a group of rabbits to abandon their warren in search of a new home, in this landmark British animation.
Requiem for a Village Requiem for a Village
Documentary 1975 68 mins Director: David Gladwell
The idyllic, pastoral past of a Suffolk village is reborn through memory in this extraordinary, little-known film from director David Gladwell.
Un Chien Andalou Un Chien Andalou
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1928 16 mins Silent Director: Luis Buñuel
A scabrous study of desire, the subconscious and anti-clericalism - Buñuel and Dalí’s provocative first film is a classic of Surrealist cinema.
Gallivant Gallivant
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1997 100 mins Director: Andrew Kötting
Andrew Kötting takes a terrific, twisting coastal tour of the UK with his family.
Fata Morgana Fata Morgana
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1971 76 mins Director: Werner Herzog
Herzog’s intense, dreamlike mediation on desert life as if seen by an alien.
Sebastiane Sebastiane
Historical drama 1976 85 mins Director: Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress
A distinctly bold and sensual reclaiming of gay history, Jarman here tells the sexually intense story of the 4th-century martyr.
Successive Slidings of Pleasure Successive Slidings of Pleasure
Drama 1974 106 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.
Trans-Europ-Express Trans-Europ-Express
Thriller 1966 95 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.
Fantastic Planet Fantastic Planet
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1973 72 mins Director: René Laloux
René Laloux and Roland Topor’s surreal, psychedelic sci-fi animation imagines a world in which humanoid creatures are kept as pets by a race of giants.
The Iron Rose The Iron Rose
Drama 1973 80 mins Director: Jean Rollin
A pair of lovers have a tryst in a vacant tomb, but then find themselves unable to escape from the graves and crypts of the massive cemetery.
The Beast The Beast
Comedy 1975 98 mins Director: Walerian Borowczyk
An outrageous classic of erotic cinema, Walerian Borowczyk’s playful and subversive fantasy finds a horny heiress courting the ravenous desires of a wild beast.
Eyes without a Face Eyes without a Face
Horror 1959 90 mins Director: Georges Franju
Georges Franju’s gorgeous, poetic horror film about a surgeon’s dark obsession with restoring his daughter’s disfigured face.
Trans-Europ-Express Trans-Europ-Express
Thriller 1966 95 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.
Successive Slidings of Pleasure Successive Slidings of Pleasure
Drama 1974 106 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.
The Living Wake The Living Wake
Comedy 2007 92 mins Director: Sol Tyron
Accompanied by his faithful assistant Mills (Jesse Eisenberg), self-proclaimed genius K. Roth Binew (Mike O’Connell) decides to go out in style following a terminal prognosis – staging a living wake.
War Pony War Pony
Drama 2022 115 mins Director: Gina Gammell and Riley Keough
The lives of two Oglala Lakota boys interlock in this coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.
Chocolat Chocolat
Drama 1988 100 mins Director: Claire Denis
Claire Denis' fully formed debut offers a child’s-eye-view of racial and sexual tension that bubbles with unspoken desires.
Paterson Paterson
Comedy 2016 118 mins Director: Jim Jarmusch
Adam Driver excels in this effortlessly charming tale of a bus driver poet in New Jersey, filmed with typically groovy elan by Jim Jarmusch.
Eat the Night Eat the Night
Thriller 2024 107 mins Director: Caroline Poggi and Johnathan Vinel
Siblings find passion and peril online and in the real world, in this visually electric French drama.
Bound Bound
Gangster 1996 109 mins Director: Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski
A seductive neo-noir and cult classic centring on lesbian desire in dangerous circumstances.