“Eden”: Two teenagers in the Colombian jungle between rebellion and redemption

The meaning of “the world” – to see

after one week VaronColombian Fabian Hernandez – the story of a teenager caught in a spiral of misery and violence on the streets of Bogotá – it’s time EdenTo take the stage by Andres Ramirez Pulido. This proximity between the two names, in a context where the distribution of non-American cinema in France is less prosperous than before, points to the cinematography of Latin America, which is regularly distinguished by excellent works, especially by the active festival broadcast in Paris, Panorama. Colombian cinema, created in 2013.

Works common in theaters, e.g La Barra (2009), Oscar Rui’s Boat, Red Light Society (2010), Ruben Mendoza, Sirga (2012), William Vega, Earth and Shadow Cesar Acevedo’s (2015) enduring interest among moviegoers.

Anti-naturalist and dreamer

Like the society that produces them—wracked by civil war, drug addiction, and poverty—these films are shaped by toxic violence. This is still the case EdenWhich immerses us in a kind of penal colony for juvenile delinquents, set in the middle of the Colombian jungle, where two methods, one purely repressive, the other experimental and gentle, are embodied by a cruel senior guard and an enlightened therapist.

Eliu and El Mono, two teenagers under a substance who want to kill the former’s father, kill a complete stranger, find themselves there in the torment of a tropical jungle, subjected to a program inspired by Transcendental Meditation. The former seeks to mend his ways, the latter to escape.

Developing an anti-naturalistic, dreamy, low-intensity plot, this film takes us away from the ultra-violence of the streets of Bogotá, such as e.g. VaronFor example, represents it. A thick jungle, a meditation, a reconstruction of a crime that explains nothing about the act committed in an alcoholic delirium and of which only the whiteness of consciousness remains, the victim’s family avenging a kind of curse. The cycle of violence, the deafening hatred that compels children to rise up against abusive and reclusive fathers, the blinding search for redemption: it all unfolds more and more in their memories. La Libertad (2001), Argentinian Lisandro Alonso, or snake hug By Ciro Guerra. It was called magical realism.