New Age sensibility bumps up against period drama in this lyrical film by writer/director Howard Goldberg. In the finely wrought screenplay, Helen (Joanna Going) is a beautiful housewife with one disadvantage. She is stricken with Multiple Sclerosis. Her domineering husband (Dylan Walsh) refuses to let her play the victim, forcing her to care for two kids and a homeful of prep school boarders. Longing to be free, she dreams of flying. As the dreams become more salient, she realizes she can finally free herself from the constraints of her crippled body through out-of-body experiences, It is only then Helen can finally be liberated from the pressures of her Eisenhower existence.

Although Eden establishes itself as yet another movie about school days in the sixties, Goldberg soon invades territory more cautious filmmakers would avoid. The obscurity of spirituality is tantalizing, alluring -- an invitation to enter an ethereal world without the usual cinematic hocus pocus As the story unfolds, we piece together the vague perceptions with sharper and sharper details, so that eventually we are enveloped with situations completely unexpected, turning these vague traces into stark reality. Eden does all this while deftly capturing an era in which women were little more than Stepford Wives.

Going is mesmerizing. Sean Patrick Flanery’s Dave, with his perpetual pout and pining eyes, captures post adolescent angst without the usual hackneyed theatrics. In fact, the entire cast, far from being presented to us fully formed, gradually develop and change, revealing themselves to the audience as they reveal themselves to each other.

For everyone who has yearned for the dim recollection of heart-felt filmmaking, for films of passion, sensitivity and bona fide emotional resonance, Eden is a must see.

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