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Article description: The decadent aftermath of May ‘68 supplies the backdrop for L’Eden et après, the fourth of Robbe-Grillet’s films and the first in colour. Parisian students gather at a café ironically called The Eden not to plot protests and utopias – politics are never mentioned – but to participate in baroque parlour games in this vast “palace of mirrors.” Their sado-erotic rituals are interrupted by the appearance of an older stranger, whose tales of Africa inspire Violette, the most beautiful denizen of The Eden, to meet him at a sinister industrial site. When she discovers him dead – and then seemingly resurrected as a Dutch sculptor back at the café – the world disintegrates around Violette, and she finds herself both pursued and pursuing ... a stolen painting on the Tunisian island of Djerba! (Got that?) Plunged into a world of erotic ordeals and vampiric ceremonies, Violette, an update of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, becomes volitional prisoner of her own desires and others’. Ravishingly shot, decked out with all manner of outré design, L’Eden et après is equal parts chic puzzle movie, upscale S&M grindhouse fare, and philosophical provocation. It is the favourite of many Robbe-Grillet heads.
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