“For my sister and I, the concept of authenticity is very important, to be true to reality. We didn’t want to over-glamorise this lifestyle, but to show the various aspects of what it’s actually like to be a DJ.” Sven Hansen-Løve is talking about his first film as a screenwriter, Eden (2015), a vivid and vivacious account of a considerable area of musical history that has, oddly, not been explored on screen before: the origins of French house music, or “French Touch”.
The fourth feature from Sven’s sister, the filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, who co-wrote the film alongside him, Eden is a passionate semi-autobiographical account of Sven’s experiences as one of the pioneering DJs of the booming French rave scene in the early 1990s, combining first-hand accounts with hauntingly accurate insights. “It’s a mixture of invention and truth,” Sven declares, whilst freely admitting how some parts of his memory are perhaps slightly more warped by the more hedonistic sides of the DJ lifestyle, where every day is a party filled with drugs, sex and endless music. “I would say at least half of it is close to the truth!”
Standing in for Sven in the film is Félix de Givry (in a star making performance) as Paul, who starts the film as a teenager perusing the underground music scene in nineties Paris. Drawn more to the soulful rhythms of the type of house music emanating from Chicago at the time, Paul and a group of friends form a DJ collective and begin taking the clubs by storm whilst building a solid national following. Living what they deem to be the high life over a couple of decades, the group soon discover that their lack of investment in a sustainable future may have shattering ramifications.
Shot in Paris, New York and Chicago – where the action shifts in the latter stages of the film, the brother-sister duo’s film is split into two sections that show the euphoric rise and punishing fall of the DJ lifestyle, something Sven has more than first-hand experience of. It’s a decidedly more ambitious film for Mia, whose sombre first three features – Tout est Pardonné (2007), Father of My Children (2009) and Goodbye First Love (2011) – formed something of a closed trilogy bound by mutual topics and themes. This sense of finality saw her embarking on something different, which is where Sven came in, though how did he ultimately become involved?
“[Mia] wanted to do a film about music and to try and say something about our generation growing up,” says the 41-year-old Sven, whose party lifestyle Mia entered at the age of 13 when he was mixing tunes at the What’s Up bar in Bastille. “The process started with her interviewing me and taking detailed notes about my experiences, then she asked me to start writing dialogue and scenes. I then ended up writing half the script with her, and we slowly started to realise what we wanted to express in the story.”
Reflecting the up and down structure of a party – “where the lights go up and you see everyone and everything in more detail”, this two-part concept was also a crucial way for the filmmakers’ to not just glorify the party lifestyle but to show its slow eventual comedown, fuelled by low personal and professional prospects. The turmoil Paul goes through in the final third of the story closely resembles Sven’s inability to move on from a life of constant partying and traveling, which he believes is a common issue amongst those young people seeking a career in the arts.
“You have to always consider what the next step will be, because if you don’t things seem to go down pretty immediately and you have to wade into an unknowable future,” opines Sven, whose also seen it happen to so many of his friends within the industry. “If you tend to ask yourselves the important questions too late, questions like whether or not you are willing to put the energy into being successful, then it becomes a major problem.”
Though he was a victim to this debilitating form of stasis, Sven has eventually been able to re-establish himself in a completely different vocation, however unintentional his newfound interest in writing initially was (he is currently doing a Creative Writing Masters degree in France). Working with Mia throughout the production, a working relationship he found very easy and natural, Sven’s preliminary role as co-scribe actually eventually lead to him serving as Artistic Consultant, which saw him becoming involved in everything from shooting, editing, sound editing (“one of the most difficult but interesting parts”, he admits) and the eventual promotion of the film. He also taught Fèlix specific DJ mixing gestures to ensure his performance was more natural and rhythmic.
If you tend to ask yourselves the important questions too late, then it becomes a major problem
His enthusiasm for this impressive range of responsibilities didn’t extend to navigating the complex financing systems in France, where everyone from the state, TV channels and private investors had a stake. A complex journey to achieving their budgetary goals was made worse by two consecutive producers quitting the project, though this is something that lead them to Charles Gillibert, who has previously worked with the likes of Xavier Dolan, Abbas Kiarostami, and Mia’s off-screen partner Olivier Assayas, as well as an artistically positive outcome. “The upside of the struggle and the risks we took with financing was that we had a lot of time to work on the writing process, which took about a year to complete,” he says.
In order to make the film’s depiction of its subject more believable, the soundtrack needed to be as in tune with the French Touch movement as possible, which was a quota Sven was more than capable of filling. Peppered with music from the likes of Sueno Latino, Octave and Daft Punk, the latter of whom are portrayed in the film at the beginning of their influential success, the soundtrack is a compilation of tracks gruellingly whittled down from about 200 to roughly 40, with the final choices included for several reasons. “We chose the songs because they were resonant and important to that time period; they are very personal and almost like souvenirs that mean something to Mia and I, and they also worked best in each respective scene,” he says.
For Sven, a man so entrenched in music, it was the gleeful blend of simple pleasures that drew him to the non-intellectualism of French Touch, which is a product of electronic dance music that connotes freedom, happiness and the ability to just simply enjoy and dance to it. It’s a brand promoting a do-it-yourself mentality that still remains relevant today for both French pop music and Sven himself as he embarks on a new chapter of his life after purging the highs and lows his DJ days.
As a debut project for a screenwriter, Eden is an impressive piece of work, imbued with a raw sense of candidness and self-discovery, which makes Sven’s decision to walk away from a career in the film industry all the more surprising. “I prefer regular writing to movie writing, and am more interested in literature, short stories and novels. I feel like that process flows a lot easier for me now that I’m a bit older,” he confesses. “When [Eden] was released I finally felt like I could move on and start something new, so I’m happy that it’s all finished and it’s finally released into the world,” he sums up, with words spoken like a true follower of such a progressive movement in French history.
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