EDEN (Howard Goldberg, U.S., 106 min.): Boarding schools offer triply intense settings for novels, plays and films. Whether by design or not, for good and/or for ill, school is a deeply "formative" experience for everyone. When both students and faculty live on campus, that's double. This hermetically sealed environment provides a ready-made stage, fully cast, energized by an artist's memory -- and bound somehow to resonate with anyone who has gone to school.

Eden turns the tables by making its protagonist a beautiful faculty wife with multiple sclerosis. The film begins and ends with the voice of Helen Kunen (Joanna Going), who also narrates from time to time as her astonishing story unfolds. Helen sounds shallow, tentative and almost "unformed" as she tells us that she and her husband, Bill (Dylan Walsh), met as children, married in college, then had a son and daughter. Models of academic and personal success, they live on the campus of his old school, Mount Eden, where Bill teaches history.

The time is the mid-'60s and change is "blowin' in the wind" even in this hothouse. Bill Kunen hasn't sensed it yet, but he has three teenage students living in his house who have. The ringleader, David (Sean Patrick Flanery), has even smoked marijuana and dared to talk back to Mr. Kunen, whom the boys dub "the barbarian." Bill and Dave are locked in an ugly power struggle, intensified by Dave's crush on Helen. The other boys call Helen "a loon."

Meanwhile, Helen struggles to raise the children, keep house and cook meals while her illness worsens. She and Bill have agreed that "normal" is the goal even in a full leg brace: hang tough, keep up appearances, keep the pressure on, and one can accomplish anything. This strategy begins to wear thin after Helen's first "out of body" experience. Freed from pain and all other restrictions, Helen begins to see the universe from the viewpoint of distant stars.

Finding no one to take her new experiences seriously, Helen must puzzle them out on her own. Her illness improves, then worsens. Without "explaining," Eden conveys the reality of much chronic illnesses: Helen cannot predict her strength or abilities from hour to hour. Bill has his own struggles. And what is Bill's love to Helen if it's only duty! What good is "tolerance" maintained so that he can continue to think well of himself? No one understands what Helen is going through, in illness and "traveling." No one wants to listen. Why live in pain when one might "travel" instead?

Eden makes internal pain bearable partly by giving us beautiful surface images. Mostly Eden makes pain bearable by having people learn and grow from it -- and giving meaning to suffering. We fallen creatures need meaning most off all.

reviewed at THE ST. LOUIS FILM FESTIVAL SPRING SAMPLER

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