by Jackie Richard
From the opening scene, Eden forces the audience to travel inside a dark world few of us ever willingly go. Eden is loosely based on the true life experiences of a teenage girl plucked from a seedy bar and held captive for over two years in the early 90s, long before human trafficking was openly acknowledged as a real epidemic. The more time goes by, the more she is forced to build relationships with her captors, both as a day-to-day survival mechanism and as a strategy to plan her escape. While she does eventually outsmart her oppressors, her harrowing experiences will forever leave her scarred.
The film stars former ‘Real World: San Diego’ reality star turned aspiring thespian Jamie Chung, Matt O’Leary, and Beau Bridges. Director Megan Griffiths was rightfully awarded the SXSW Chicken & Egg Emergent Narrative Woman Director Award for her smart and delicate approach to such a seedy subject matter. Her main objective was to make a watchable film so that the audience danced just up to the line of grotesque but not obscene, where they could feel deep sadness and compassion for the protagonist without feeling like the film was borderline pornographic.
I was pleasantly surprised with the daring performances, especially newcomer Jamie Chung, who was awarded a Special Jury Recognition for her gripping portrayal of Eden.
What a privilege it was for the audience to meet the “real life” Eden, who bravely joined the cast and crew onstage for the Q&A. Judging from her emotional reaction to watching the film, the filmmakers did justice to her story, although she did remark “the script was quite watered down; I wish I had it as easy as Eden did..” (which to the audience did not look the least bit easy).
Griffiths and her scriptwriter made some really wise decisions by keeping the plot steadily moving along without dwelling too much on the graphic nature of the story. This also leads to a handful of climatic encounters where you have no clue how Eden will react or what decision she will make when pushed to the brink, leading you to question “what would I have done differently than Eden?” To which my gut tells me, probably nothing.
