Tavo Ruiz | Eden / 2021

eden isn’t for gay boys

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tavo Ruiz (screenwriter and director) Eden / 2021 [15 minutes]

 

Mexican director Tavo Ruiz, who writes and produces his films in Germany, has created a sort of metaphorical gay version of the story of Adam and Eve. Here the subject, however, is not just Adam and Yves, but the young lead, Lukas’ (Jan Osoica) best female friend, Hannah (Sophie de Frenne), who living in Berlin, welcomes back a friend who they both love, Fynn (Jon Rosenkranz).

     Where he has gone, “for a long while,” and what their particular relationship to him in the past involved is never revealed. We only see early clues that Lukas had obviously fallen in love with Fynn. And upon his return, as they immediately retreat to the film’s version of Eden, a forest that appears to be gradually dwindling from the purposeful cutting of trees. We quickly perceive that both Hannah and Lukas are equally attracted to their returned friend.

     Hannah, far more forceful and effective almost immediately goes on the prowl, telling her bestie Lukas that she intends to let him fuck her, taking away her apparent virginity. She “trusts him,” as she explains to Lukas. But Lukas, almost immediately distressed by her comments, quickly reveals that he also “trusts” Fynn, and it is quite obvious that he too would like to lose his virginity to the “cute” returnee.

    As Lukas witnesses her sexual assault on his beloved Fynn, readily accepted by their mutual object of desire, Lukas escapes deeper into the “forest,” revealing in the process, however, just how this stand of woods has already been deforested.

    He meets a darkly attractive young man, Teufel (Marcelo Rodrigues), obviously a manifestation of the devil, who is only too ready to meet up with Lukas and make love to him, and, for a moment Lukas is willing, telling the Devil a lie, that his name is Eve. But Hannah and Fynn, having noticed his absence seek him out, calling out his real name.

    Fynn finally discovers him in a kind of sandy clearing, obviously from where all the trees have already been removed, a world clearly now outside of Eden. Fynn asks “What’s wrong,” Lukas answering, “Don’t you know?” and quickly adding, “I love you.”

     Fynn pauses as if coming to his own realization and the way to express it. “What is this place?” he inquires. And finally admitting his own reaction to Lukas words, “How can we come back?”

    Shrugging a bit, as if now possessed with complete knowledge of situation, Lukas responds: “We can’t anymore.”

     As Lukas has admitted to Hannah quite early in the film, “Every Eden on Earth is unreal.”

   Apparently, whatever he and Fynn once had or even what they might have experienced as love together is no longer possible in the world in which they exist.

     Ruiz’s bittersweet fable explains the real fall of Eden means, that perhaps Adam and Yves’ love will always be haunted by heterosexual normativity, leaving gay boys like Lukas to consort with the snake.

 

Los Angeles, November 2, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).