| . | 04/17/2008
Eden
By: Ted Faraone
Eileen Walsh and Aidan Kelly in "Eden."
Tribeca Film Festival Review
“Eden”
One star out of Five. $2.00 ticket on a scale of $0 to $10.50
FALLING INTO A POOL OF SLIME
Watching “Eden,” a feature by Irish helmer Declan Recks based on a play by Eugene O’Brian (who also wrote the screenplay) is like tripping into a pool of slime. One emerges needing a shower. It’s not that “Eden” is a slimy film. It isn’t. The slime is in the storyline and in protagonist Billy Farrell, a telephone lineman played with skill by Aidan Kelly.
Plot centers on the 10th wedding anniversary of an Irish couple (Kelly and Eileen Wash as Breeda) whose marriage is heading for the rocks. Set in the Irish town of Edenderry, Co. Offaly, the issue is Brian’s impotence and his unwillingness to confront it. He’d rather bury his head in a bottle and make goo-goo eyes at the local hottie, 20-something Imelda Egan (Sarah Green). Guess no one in the Irish Republic ever heard of Viagra.
Breeda, who’s longing for intimacy is graphically played out in a bathtub masturbation scene, pins her hopes on the anniversary to rekindle their romance. Billy, however, gives her the slip on their big night and makes a bloody fool of himself drunkenly attempting to rape Imelda at a party in her parents’ house. Kelly captures Billy’s self-indulgent sliminess, and Walsh is totally believable as the hopeful but desperate Breeda. Peter O’Toole’s daughter, Kate, provides welcome comic relief as busty, flirty matron Yvonne Egan (Imelda’s mom).
The screenplay, like many sex acts, starts slowly and builds to a crescendo, but the waiting time is made up mostly of excessively naturalistic scenes of domesticity, wherein conversational English uttered with thick Irish accents needs to be subtitled for American auds.
Declan Recks’ direction is at best uneven. He is at his best when the screenplay is explicit. In intimate moments where action is implied, he falls back on the lingering closeup of actors’ faces, a technique done to death in last year’s “Atonement.” Kelly and Walsh convey much through facial expression, but the screenplay gives them little with which to work. Even their ultimate scene, a payoff that would make the Hayes office proud, smacks of improvisation.
“Eden” does attain paradise in at least one sequence: It’s the intercutting of Billy’s inept rape with Breeda’s passionate go at sexual satisfaction with one of his friends (Gavin O’Connor) outdoors, in a stranger’s docked boat, after being stood up on the anniversary. Kudos to editor Gareth Young. The contrast could not be more stark. The same cannot be said for original music by Stephen Rennicks. It consists of a somber leitmotif whose variations eventually grate. Tech credits are adequate. Pic seems longer than its 84 minutes.
Eugene O’Brian’s eponymous play was a hit on the Dublin stage in 2001. The award winning script was eventually staged in London and New York and translated into ten languages. It is no wonder that the project got financing from pubcaster Radio Telefis Eirenann, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, and The Irish Film Board. Too bad it didn’t live up to its promise.
Clearly shot on a budget and lacking star power, “Eden” may have difficulty finding US audiences outside the art house circuit. Pic is not yet rated, but due to its subject matter and frank sexuality it is unsuitable for children.
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