Toward the end of “Eden,” director Mia Hansen-Løve’s love letter to youthful innocence and generational shift, the main character, a DJ named Paul, visits a sparsely crowded subterranean club. The setting is familiar, but something has changed: all the energy has been sucked out of the room.The DJ at the front of the room, illuminated by the glow of her laptop, begins to play a song. It’s Daft Punk — who play a crucial role in the narrative of the film — but here the song is slowed down, pensive and melancholy. In their robotic voices, they sing:“I’ve been, for some timeLooking for someoneI need to know nowPlease tell me who I am”Paul, who at this point in the film has seen better days, succumbs to the song. It’s as if the vocals are coming straight from his experience, his constant search for identity, which the film charts over a number of years and through a series of minor setbacks and major tragedies. It’s a staggering moment, one of the film’s best.While “Eden” is a tribute to the French Touch scene of the 1990s and features a sweetly addictive and floor thumping soundtrack — Frankie Knuckles, Joey Beltram, and the aforementioned Daft Punk are all included — the music is more than just a backdrop. The film, co-written by the director’s brother Sven Hansen-Løve, is autobiographical — the main character is loosely based on his life as a DJ within the French Touch scene — and uses electronic music to tell a universal story in a specific way. Paul, like many teenagers, is attracted to the music as a way to connect to others. All his friends go to all the same club nights and listen to the same music, and most of them participate in the scene in some tangible way — if they’re not making music, they are throwing parties, or drawing comics, or making zines.When the film opens, what they’re doing is not yet popular. It’s still regulated to parties deep in the woods, knowledge spread through word of mouth. Paul, attending a party with some of his friends, awkwardly shuffles up to the DJ after a gig, asking him about one of the songs he had just played. You can see him taking everything in — the way the DJ handles his crate of records, the way his hands glide over the turntables and mixer. Everything is being absorbed, and the next thing we know he’s in his apartment honing his skills with his own stack of records.“Eden” makes clear that these characters are not riding the bandwagon. They watched and listened to what was out there and used it to create their own thing. They become popular as the music gains traction with the general public, but they are never superstars, even if they enjoy some of the perks of celebrity — drugs and women, mostly. Instead, they keep things closed off from the outside world, just a select group having a good time together.But times change and trends move on. The perks all disappear, or at least the money to afford them. Friends begin to drift away; meager earnings and drink tickets from clubs are no longer enough. Paul is the last one to notice what is happening around him, swayed by the music and an adolescent desire. Early in the film, when he is first beginning to play music, he has an American girlfriend (Greta Gerwig) who seems as aimless as he is at that moment. When she leaves, moving back to New York, he is heartbroken but continues on his path. Years later, when he is visiting New York and getting ready to play a summer party at MoMA PS1, he calls her up, hoping for the same person that existed in the past. What he finds is a pregnant woman living with a boyfriend, who has succeeded in the writing career she was only mentioning when Paul knew her. She has changed, expanded, matured. He is exactly the same.Finally, Paul is left with nothing but distant memories. He returns to former loves and passions — an ex-girlfriend now with children, his former literature studies — but he is still searching. The plea he hears in the Daft Punk song is his own: “I need to know now, please tell me who I am.” But it’s not an epiphany moment, at least for the audience. What he finally understands is that moments cannot be frozen; there is no stopping the rush of time. At the end of the film, Paul reads a poem by Robert Creeley that seems like it’s responding to his life: “It is all a rhythm.”“Eden” opens June 19 at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York.
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