Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £4.99 a month

Eden and After
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s sensual fantasy follows a group of students who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic realm after taking a mysterious drug.
Drama 1969 98 mins
Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Overview
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first film in colour finds him audaciously marrying his theories of narrative experimentation with a highly sensual visual style to create one of his most distinctive works. It charts the descent into depravity of a group of bourgeois students, who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic desert realm after taking a mysterious drug called “fear powder”. As their realities distort and their interrelationships diverge into master-slave hierarchies, Robbe-Grillet’s narrative becomes ever more fractured and fevered.
Partially set in Tunisia, the film’s desert setting was in fact a key factor in the film’s genesis, with the country’s red and yellow desert hues convincing Robbe-Grillet he could finally make a film in colour, having previously expressed dissatisfaction with the way Eastmancolor stock conveyed the colour green. Drawing on an array of visual influences from Piet Mondrian to Marcel Duchamp and Paul Klee, Robbe-Grillet certainly found favour with his new palette (revelling especially in splashes of red blood), but it was arguably the theories of sonic adventurers that proved the most pertinent. The director was fascinated with the twelve-tone musical structures of August Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez, so he structured his plot as a series of twelve recurring themes rather than a conventional narrative. Despite the rather stiff-sounding theories and formal experiments that Robbe-Grillet adopts, the film is far from a dry exercise. A tactile and playful fantasy brimming with beautiful bodies and startling images, Eden and After is not so much a mystery to unravel but rather a narcotic, sensory experience to bathe in.

Related
Drama

Goodbye Solo Goodbye Solo
Comedy 2008 87 mins Director: Ramin Bahrani
The pairing of a Senegalese taxi driver and a grumbling old-timer in North Carolina is the basis for the latest insightful portrait of human behaviour from Ramin Bahrani.

Chop Shop Chop Shop
Drama 2007 81 mins Director: Ramin Bahrani
Hopeful and heartbreaking second feature from the director of Man Push Cart.

Servants Servants
Drama 2020 81 mins Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
Ivan Ostrochovský’s stark drama about a seminary’s struggles for religious independence under Communist rule is both beautiful and brutal.

Tides Tides
Drama 2017 100 mins Director: Tupaq Felber
Four thirtysomethings find some much-needed time to reconnect in this beautifully observed and subtly insightful debut.

Tony Takitani Tony Takitani
Drama 2004 76 mins Director: Jun Ichikawa
Award-winning film adapted from Haruki Murakami’s New Yorker tale of solitude and obsession.

Ava Ava
Drama 2017 103 mins Director: Sadaf Foroughi
Sadaf Foroughi's gripping debut about a young girl's coming-of-age in a strict, traditional society.
Fantastique

Successive Slidings of Pleasure Successive Slidings of Pleasure
Drama 1974 106 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.

Trans-Europ-Express Trans-Europ-Express
Thriller 1966 95 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.

Fantastic Planet Fantastic Planet
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1973 72 mins Director: René Laloux
René Laloux and Roland Topor’s surreal, psychedelic sci-fi animation imagines a world in which humanoid creatures are kept as pets by a race of giants.

The Iron Rose The Iron Rose
Drama 1973 80 mins Director: Jean Rollin
A pair of lovers have a tryst in a vacant tomb, but then find themselves unable to escape from the graves and crypts of the massive cemetery.

The Immortal One The Immortal One
Drama 1962 101 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
The debut feature from famed novelist and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet is a daring examination of fantasy and memory set in Turkey.

Eyes without a Face Eyes without a Face
Horror 1960 90 mins Director: Georges Franju
Georges Franju’s gorgeous, poetic horror film about a surgeon’s dark obsession with restoring his daughter’s disfigured face.
Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Successive Slidings of Pleasure Successive Slidings of Pleasure
Drama 1974 106 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.

Trans-Europ-Express Trans-Europ-Express
Thriller 1966 95 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.
New

Goodbye Solo Goodbye Solo
Comedy 2008 87 mins Director: Ramin Bahrani
The pairing of a Senegalese taxi driver and a grumbling old-timer in North Carolina is the basis for the latest insightful portrait of human behaviour from Ramin Bahrani.

Chop Shop Chop Shop
Drama 2007 81 mins Director: Ramin Bahrani
Hopeful and heartbreaking second feature from the director of Man Push Cart.

Catch the Fair One Catch the Fair One
Thriller 2021 86 mins Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Haunted by the disappearance of her younger sister two years prior, a former champion boxer (Kali Reis) leaves no stone unturned in her brutal search for answers.

Servants Servants
Drama 2020 81 mins Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
Ivan Ostrochovský’s stark drama about a seminary’s struggles for religious independence under Communist rule is both beautiful and brutal.

Tides Tides
Drama 2017 100 mins Director: Tupaq Felber
Four thirtysomethings find some much-needed time to reconnect in this beautifully observed and subtly insightful debut.

Rojo Rojo
Thriller 2018 105 mins Director: Benjamin Naishtat
Set in a pre-coup d’etat Argentina, successful lawyer Claudio (Darío Grandinetti, Wild Tales) leads a comfortable life – until an altercation in a restaurant and a split-second decision slowly unravel everything he has built up.