What begins as an allegory on the repercussions of disobeying parents and social regulations becomes more about the perils in a technologically-stunted society in something akin to Michael Haneke’s American remake of his own film Funny Games. To be clear, Funny Games is much better than Eden, but Eden has moments that make us realize twenty years ago might just have been a more dangerous place on account of the limited access to communication.
This is doubly apparent in the first few minutes of the film that finds the young, eighteen-year-old, braces-wearing Korean-American girl, Hyun Jae (Jamie Chung), in a bar with her best underage friend being offered shots of whiskey by Jesse, a handsome, unassuming stranger at the adjacent perpendicular end. His boyish smile and fireman’s coat bespeak both innocence and authority. His coat, which is eerily too big for his frame, suggests an air of nobility and honor, and thus the girls, primarily Jae, are comforted.
As Jae’s curfew expires, she finds herself in his car, driving along to somewhere presumably quiet. In 2012, this moment is uncanny in that the situation is familiar, but the ability to reach out and quickly inform her parents of her whereabouts sets her evening on a dangerous path. While some might see the cellular conduit between parent and child as a restrictive tether than stunts maturity, experience, and individual growth, Jae’s non-existent phone is the only reason why she’s so easily kidnapped. As the bright lights in the trailing car blind her and she notices that her fireman has an array of various uniforms in his backseat (pilot, officer, etc.), a simple text to her friends, a phone call to her parents, or one to the police most likely could have saved her, or at least prevented her year-long disappearance.
To Eden’s credit, the point about technology is not belabored so that we rush out and arm all of our children with cellular phones and activate the built-in GPS’s, though I suspect that any parents watching this film might take these actions. Rather, the point is made subtly, forcing us to compare our place in 2013 with our experiences in 1994, when this film is set.
Disturbingly, the only appearance of a cellular phone is in the hand of Bob Gault (Beau Bridges), a Federal Marshall with a seedy underside. He is both a symbol of law and the operator of the prostitution ring into which Jae (and many other girls of varying nationalities) is indoctrinated. The phone he has is seen briefly. It is clunk and archaic. Seen on screen, it is this generation’s version of a reference to vinyl, cassette tapes, and – eventually – CD’s. Its appearance is both laughable and poignant, reminding us that “mobile phones” are a thing of the not-so-distant past, but an abject necessity now for more reasons than one. In Eden, this phone represents an omnipresence of evil masked as good. Gault’s presence over the unceremonious grave of a lyme-dusted runaway prostitute is elided because he can create a simultaneous alibi by telling someone else where he is via cellphone.
Minus the dead body, this is something we do now: place ourselves in one location while we’re actually in another, perhaps to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. But today we create tracking systems for ourselves. We check in to Four Square or Facebook. Many phones offer apps that track our friends and create relationship grids. In Eden – and 1994 – the cellphone could be a means of deception and alibi-creation. The caller ID was non-existent as were communal tracking systems that forced us to be open about our locations.
Such nefariousness that Bob employs is doubly emphasized by his protestation about this up-and-coming “Internet thing.” He notes, this illicit “business is not meant to be glorified with technology.” In a way, he is certainly correct that this business, despite its desire to expand, should not be ubiquitously marketed, but his rationale centers on the ability for someone to track it – and by default him. In Eden, burgeoning technology is simultaneously a blessing for the few who can utilize it and a curse as its using population expands.
Interwoven with this most interesting theme, there are others about loyalty, survival, and a capitalism ethos wherein humans are akin to social detritus and money is the ultimate goal. The last theme is hammered home heavily at the end, but its current is not as strong throughout, so the film does not tire out the audience with preachy lessons about greed and humanity. The same can be said for each theme that Eden tackles. All are subtly brought into the fold, none are too heavy handed. And for a film about kidnapping and forced prostitution, Eden does not employ shock value to keep an audience glued to the screen or to emphasize the inhumanity writhing underneath the artificial relations that transpire between the captors and the captured.