Eden and After (1970)

Here’s another essay in sexy weirdness from French art house director Alain Robbe-Grillet. I’m not even sure quite where to begin with this one, which is probably as it should be. After all, its auteur co-wrote LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD, one of the greatest enigmatic movies of all time. 

         EDEN AND AFTER (L’EDEN ET APRES) begins with a disorientating credits sequence in which title cards of actors' names are repeated while other technical credits are read out over them. Then we find ourselves in an art installation-cum-coffee shop called Eden, where a group of maths students meet to pontificate, in a way that only French art house actors really can, about how boring life is and the meaninglessness of everything. To assuage their ennui they construct macabre role-playing games that include (surprise surprise) bizarre sexual activities as well. 

         One of these make-believe tableaux is the springboard for the second half of the film, which takes its central character of Violette (Catherine Jourdan) and details her journey through a world of the strange and sexy, played out against a Tunisian backdrop. Along the way we get to see many familiar Robbe-Grillet tropes - attractive ladies put in cages, being chained up, being blindfolded, and some fun with broken glass. As with some of his other movies, such as TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS, the line between reality and fantasy gets so blurred that it’s impossible to tell which is which, and I suspect that’s very much the point. Other reviews have likened EDEN AND AFTER to Alice in Wonderland written by the Marquis de Sade and that’s actually as good a description as any. What I would say is that, while I didn’t understand all of it, I still found it an immensely worthwhile and rewarding viewing experience. 

Like the other movies in the BFI’s box set, EDEN AND AFTER comes with an introduction from Catherine Robbe-Grillet, a trailer, an interview with Frederic Taddei, and a commentary by Tim Lucas, who once again proves that he’s absolutely the best man for a job like this. 

So yes, I liked EDEN AND AFTER. There just isn’t enough weird, enigmatic and perhaps occasionally impenetrable art house cinema around these days, certainly not featuring gorgeous girls, blood, and lots of running around with knives. If you’re getting the BFI box set I’d recommend you start with either SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE or TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS (both reviewed on this site) rather than this one. Anyone who is still undecided about whether or not to plunge into the world of Alain Robbe-Grillet well, that’s why I’ve put all these pictures up here.

The BFI is releasing the box set Alain Robbe-Grillet: 6 Films 1964 - 1974 on DVD and Blu-ray on 30th June 2014. The set will contain:

THE IMMORTAL ONE (L'IMMORTELLE) (1963)

TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS (1967)

THE MAN WHO LIES (L'HOMME QUI MENT) (1968)

EDEN AND AFTER (L'EDEN ET APRES) (1970)

N. TOOK THE DICE (N. A PRIS LES DES…) (1971)
SUCCESSIVE SLIDING OF PLEASURE (GLISSEMENTS PROGRESSIFS DU PLAISIR) (1974)

Trans-Europ-Express (1967)

      “This stuff never happens in Belgium!”

It’s time once again to enter the heady, sometimes inscrutable, often sexy, occasionally kinky world of French art house cinema with a look at one of the earlier works in the BFI’s forthcoming Alain Robbe-Grillet box set.

We’re in the Gare du Nord in Paris. Robbe-Grillet himself flicks through what might be termed at the time a publication for ‘sophisticated tastes’ at a newsagents before boarding the train of the title. But wait! It’s not him at all! Instead he’s playing a director called Jean who, together with his producer Marc (Paul Louyet) and his script girl Lucette (Catherine Robbe-Grillet) is trying to work out the plot for a new film. We see his initial crime movie plot pitch acted out with men in fake comedy beards and an Adam West-era BATMAN-style bomb which explodes and gets us into the main credits. 

Jean-Louis Trintignant is an actor who, for me as a boy, was always the Man Who Was In Every French Film Ever, beating even such ubiquitous late-night BBC2 favourites like Alain Delon and Gerard Depardieu. He gets on the train. “He could be your star” says Lucette and all of a sudden he is, playing drugs courier Elias and getting into all kinds of mishaps dealing with a gang who seem to be constantly testing his trustworthiness. It all reaches a climax when the police set a trap for Elias that involves a naked girl sitting on a rotating disc while chains are wound around her as part of a nightclub act and train noises and the sound of a woman moaning play on the soundtrack. 

For the most part, TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS is a light-hearted play on the French Flic movie genre. All the traditional tropes are there, including Alan Partridge’s “men in long raincoats who meet in brasseries at dawn”, silly coded messages, fake policemen (including Daniel Emilfork who will be known to fans of Euro-horror for playing the devil in Jean Brismee’s THE DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE (1971), obviously pretend blind men, tiny guns, and a beautiful girl (Marie-France Pisier) who isn’t what she seems and also isn’t averse to a bit of bondage (this is a Robbe-Grillet film after all).

The film frequently cuts back to Robbe-Grillet and his collaborators working on the plot that is unfolding in front of us, effectively blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality (which in this film is also fantasy of course, but of a different kind) and placing it firmly in that special genre of movies that are about movie making, one that might include Preston Sturges’ SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (1941) and, perhaps even more similarly, Michael Winterbottom’s A COCK AND BULL STORY (2005).

The BFI’s Blu-ray transfer looks excellent and the print is clean and bright. Extras include another thirty minute interview with the director that’s actually quite a delight to watch, and a newly recorded commentary track from Tim Lucas that is likewise pleasantly informative and points out things that may well get missed on a first viewing. In fact it’s a bit like having a good (and chatty) friend who knows a lot about the movie in the room with you.

Another winner from the BFI, I have to say I found much to enjoy in TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS. I may well be becoming a fan of M. Robbe Grillet.

The BFI is releasing their box set ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET: SIX FILMS 1963-1974 on Blu-ray and DVD formats on 30th June 2014. 

Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974)

        I have to confess to being not that familiar with the works of French art-house director Alain Robbe-Grillet. I’ve seen LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (which he co-wrote) several times because I love it, but I've never had the chance to immerse myself in his directorial efforts. Anyone (like me) requiring a crash course in Robbe-Grillet is going to be well served by a new Blu-ray and DVD six film set currently being prepared for release by the BFI. Although the movies are not going to be released by the BFI individually, I thought it might be fun to give some of them separate write-ups.

The most recent film in the set is 1974’s SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE. Made on a tiny budget it tells, at its most superficial level, the story of an unnamed girl (Anicée Alvina) who is arrested and accused of the crime of murdering her flatmate (Olga Georges-Picot from Fred Zinneman’s DAY OF THE JACKAL and Tyburn’s PERSECUTION) by stabbing her to death with a pair of scissors. That’s about it for logic as Robbe-Grillet’s film presents us with a series of fascinating, disturbing, erotic and bizarre images that make up most of the running time. 

        While the film doesn’t always make a lot of sense (and probably isn’t supposed to) it’s never less than hypnotic, with plenty to please those with a fondness for mid-1970s Euro-horrors. With its combination of blood, beaches and beautiful women, there’s something of a Jean Rollin flavour to much of what is on screen, but Robbe-Grillet is a better film-maker than Rollin, and his use of these elements to explore a number of thematic concepts is ultimately more successful, and carried off with a far greater sense of finesse. Likewise, the numerous scenes of dungeon-related kinkiness reminded me of the work of Jess Franco, but with far more style and a genuine sense of the erotic rather than the ‘point the camera and pray’ approach frequently employed by that (beloved by me I’ll hasten to add) director.

For Euro fans there are several familiar faces. As well as Georges-Picot the judge interrogating Alvina is played by Michel Lonsdale (MOONRAKER & THE NAME OF THE ROSE) and the cop who initially gets called to Alvina’s house is played by an uncredited Jean-Louis Trintignant (UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME, SO SWEET, SO PERVERSE and many others).

The BFI’s Blu-ray looks gorgeous, and is an improvement on the Region A Redemption release in terms of extras if nothing else. Both discs contain a fascinating interview with Robbe-Grillet from 1984 that helped me understand the film, but the BFI disc also has a newly-filmed introduction by the director’s wife Catherine (who wrote S&M classic L’IMAGE, later filmed by Radley Metzger) and an erudite and informative commentary by Tim Lucas.

The more I think about it, the more I really liked SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE. It virtually screams mid-70s French art-house, with all the kinds of imagery that was mercilessly satirised on British TV sketch shows by everyone from MONTY PYTHON to THE GOODIES (eggs being cracked open on a naked girl, scantily clad ladies lying in rock pools for no good reason, a bed frame buried on a beach, and many more). But in a modern world where cinemas show little but dull, formulaic, sanitised Hollywood product it still feels like an absolute breath of fresh air. Slightly naughty sado-masochistic beautifully filmed art-house air, mind you, but as far as I’m concerned that just makes it all the sweeter.

The BFI is releasing their box set ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET: SIX FILMS 1963-1974 on Blu-ray and DVD formats on 30th June 2014.