Synopsis
A young American writer completes his service in WWI and travels across Europe with his wife and her attractive Italian girlfriend. Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.
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Cast
- Jack HustonDavid Bourne
- Mena SuvariCatherine Bourne
- Carmen MauraMadame Aurol
- Richard E. GrantColonel Philip Boyle
- Caterina MurinoMarita
- Matthew ModineDavid's Father
- Isabella OrlowskaConstanza
- Serah MwihakiAfrican Woman #1
- Hellen WaithiraAfrican Woman #2
- Olivia NjambiAfrican Woman #3
Recommendations
- 60
Los Angeles Times
Handsomely presented, with locations in Spain and Africa, the film at moments accomplishes its ambitions of being a tart piece of steamed-up Jazz Age storytelling. - 50
Village Voice
Director John Irvin, whose hapless 40-plus-year résumé runs from early Schwarzenegger to late Harold Pinter, never gets in the way, but the resulting sangria cocktail is mild, unchallenging, and kinda dull. - 50
Movieline
Though based on the Hemingway novel published 25 years after his death, Hemingway's Garden of Eden feels more like the result of an ungodly alliance between Harlequin house writers and the cut-and-paste masterminds at A&E Biography. - 40
Time Out
For an especially egregious bit of miscasting, look no further than Mena Suvari, star of this tony adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's posthumously published novel about a disintegrating marriage. - 40
New York Daily News
While Suvari is especially miscast as a sophisticate, only Richard E. Grant, as a worldly Brit, seems to understand the text. - 33
The A.V. Club
The film isn't erotic or profound. It is occasionally comic, though-like reading the finalists for one of those Bad Sex In Fiction awards. - 30
Variety
Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp. - 12
New York Post
Everybody flirts with everyone else as director John Irvin pours on a level of shopping-mall-gift-shop-kitsch that would shame Wayne Newton.
