At the beginning of the 1990’s, electronic music is on the rise. The French music scene is attracting dreamers who have grown up in the animated obscurity of rave parties and now want to become DJs. Among them is Paul, who forms the duo Cheers with his friend Stan. It is the beginning of a long, 15-year adventure, from cool clubs to trips around the world, through relationships with lovers and friends, disenchantment and hard drugs.

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Mia Hansen-Løve’s captures the beauty of the night lit by neon and spotlights, a world of universal naïveté within a period that has not been explored much, and one that is both unnerving and spellbinding. Having grown up with big brother Sven, who was caught up in the French Touch sound of the 90’s, the director of Tout est pardonné and Un amour de jeunesse was able to gather the mood of the times from her own experience to tell the story of a wave that marked the end of a musical century. This compassionate look across more than a decade, at the hopes and disenchantment of a generation, is the best part of Eden. The rest is desperately lacking in passion and dimension, with seemingly endless and repetitive scenes of lifeless nights spread out over two laborious hours. The movie ends abruptly with the main character tripped up by bleak reality, which gives the movie a certain sinister beauty that is much more remarkable than what came before.