Parents' Guide to The Absence of Eden

Writer-director Marco Perego's feature-film debut is introspective and poetic, with fantastic lead actors and insightful messages, but the plot is muddled and the third act is rushed. Saldaña (who is married to Perego) and Hedlund are both talented, nuanced, and expressive actors, and they do a lot with the material, which stretches thinner and thinner until their characters briefly—and anticlimactically—interact. Perego and co-writer Rick Rapoza's screenplay includes lyrical, Terrence Malick-style ruminations on life, love, and loss, courtesy of Esme's abuelita's journal. Unfortunately, the connection between the two main characters isn't fully fleshed out, and audiences will be left wishing there had been more to the final scenes than the duo's single encounter.

Despite The Absence of Eden's flaws, it will likely make viewers think about the reasons that people undertake the harrowing journey to the United States and how vulnerable they are to exploitation and violence. Cinematographer Javier Avila does a fine job capturing the dangerous landscape of the border crossing and the claustrophobic experience of being an ICE agent who doesn't know how he feels about his job. There's a telling, awkward double-date scene in which Shipp and Yadira go out with Dobbins and his White girlfriend that could be used as a textbook example of microaggressions ("where are you really from?"). And a final conversation between the two agents makes it clear that despite the marginal empathy one of them feels, they (and the country at large) don't want anything to do with abused, undocumented children.