Eden à l'Ouest (2009)

Director:

Costa-Gavras

Writers:

Costa-Gavras (writer)
Jean-Claude Grumberg (writer)

Release Date:

11 February 2009 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A drama centered around the illegal immigrants living in the EU. |

Plot Keywords:

Illegal Immigrant | Place Name In Title | Cardinal Direction In Title

Cast

Riccardo Scamarcio	...	Elias - un émigré clandestin
Odysseas Papaspiliopoulos	...	L'ami d' Elias
Léa Wiazemsky	...	Nina - une vacancière
Tess Spentzos	...	Un amie de Nina
Kristen Ross	...	Une amie de Nina
Stella-Melina Vasilaki	...	L'hôtesse
Gil Alma	...	Bob
Eric Caravaca	...	Jack - le directeur adjoint de l'Eden Club
Marissa Triandafyllidou	...	La directrice de l'Eden Club (as Marisha Triantafillidou)
Konstandinos Markoulakis	...	Yvan (as Konstantinos Markoulakis)
Mona Achache	...	Mari-Lou
Alexandre Bancel	...	Bernard
Juliane Köhler	...	Christina Lisner (as Juliane Koehler)
Igor Raspopov	...	Leonid
Ina Tsolakis	...	La femme de Leonid

Also Known As:

Eden Is West (International: English title)
Paradeisos sti Dysi (Greece)
Verso l'eden (Italy)

Runtime:

France:110 min

Country:

France | Greece | Italy

Language:

French | German | Greek | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Greece:K-13 | France:U

Filming Locations:

Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris 8, Paris, France

Company:

K.G. Productions

Trivia:

The title is an ironical reference to John Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' and its 1955 film adaptation by Elia Kazan, East of Eden (1955).

A Costa Gavras Letdown

I admit that it was the director's name that made me choose this film from the selection of international films offered by Qantas in their on-board entertainment system on my flight home.

The initial sequence of illegal immigrants on a boat was haunting as they ripped their identification cards and threw them into the water. As authorities came to arrest them, we meet Elias who dove into the sea to escape. He was washed ashore on a nudist beach resort. And from then you know that things would turn for the ludicrous.

It is a cat and mouse game as Elias tries to find his was to Paris to search for a magician who told him to look for him there. On that flimsy premise, the movie became a road trip where Elias encounters and interacts with people who had various problems. Elias was always just the witness of events, but we never find out anything about his past. We do not even know from which country he came from! I kept on watching the film because I wanted to see how Elias would finally fare when he reaches Paris. However when he does meet the magician in Paris, the expected grand finale of Elias' exodus was nowhere to be seen. The crazy visual gimmick that Costa Gavras did on the Eiffel Tower in the ending even made the whole movie look stupid.