Paradise Love
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Actors: Inge Maux, Margarete Tiesel, Peter Kazungu
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Genre(s): Drama
Running time: Germany minutes
The first in director Ulrich Seidl's "Paradise Trilogy", to be followed by Faith and Hope, Love finds us in Kenya with the 50 year old Teresa (Margarete Tiesel). Having dumped her daughter on a neighbour back home in Austria, she romps off to a tourist resort in the struggling African nation with one thing in mind: Sex. In this part of the world a woman like Teresa is in high demand, a rich lonely female with quite a bit of disposable income. For a time it's all going pretty well, as she saddles up with a number of lithe young local men, but it all starts to sour for her once she realises that as much as she is using them, they are also using her.
Teresa is nothing more than a "Sugar Mama" to them, and once they've got their hooks into her, they will use her for every last penny she has. They local townsfolk have wised up to their exploitation, and are now using that very same exploitation to do some exploiting of their own. Morally and emotionally it becomes very difficult to know who to feel more pity or anger towards, and over the course of the movie things get pretty grim.
The film, much like its lead actress, the country it's set in and the topic it is confronting, is a myriad of conflictions; pathetic and yet sympathetic, horrific and yet beautiful. Teresa is a sad woman, using her insecurities to an emotional advantage, and a completely-free-from-vanity Tiesel plays her as a disgusting yet all too relatable person.
It will raise some questions in your own mind about the ethics at play on screen, but it does so with a complete lack of subtlety. Every last woman seems to be a rich sexual predator, and every last man is a morally bankrupt submissive. There is an important point being shown in Paradise: Lost, but it seems content in showing it over and over (and over) again, without any kind of satisfying resolution.
Fantastically acted and all too topical, but perhaps too repetitive with it's repulsiveness to be whole-heartedly recommended.
