Crossing International Lines For Love, Sex And Exploitation: Bleak, But With A Fearless Lead Performance
To be perfectly blunt, Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl's "Paradise: Love" displays three seemingly incongruous qualities simultaneously. It is strangely hopeful, unrepentantly bleak, AND darkly humorous. All of these attributes make it painfully realistic as well. And it is this realness, this unwavering look at some of the seamier elements of aging and sexuality that might scare away more mainstream viewers. I can't say that I enjoyed the movie in a traditional sense, but it certainly made a visceral impact. The first in a proposed trilogy (with Paradise: Faith and Paradise: Hope), the trio of films follow three female members of the same family as they travel on separate excursions. In "Paradise: Love" matriarch Teresa (a fearless Margarete Tiesel) travels to a resort in Kenya for what initially appears to be relaxation and sight-seeing. What quickly becomes apparent, however, is that she actually seeks something of a more intimate nature. The middle-aged women who partake...
Paradise Lost
This movie starts off with Teresa (Margaret Tiesel) saying goodbye to her daughter who is lying on her bed playing with her cell phone. It is obvious that her daughter finds Teresa an annoyance. Their relationship seems fraught with disconnection and Teresa leaves for her vacation in Kenya on that note. Once in Kenya, Teresa seems enamored of the country and the beautiful weather along with her hotel. The other women she meets tell her about the men they have been having sex with - young Africans who they meet at the beach or in town. She sees that one of her new friends has purchased a motorbike for her 'boyfriend' and this surprises Teresa. Teresa, at first, is totally against finding a lover. Gradually, she succumbs to the idea and tries to have sex with a man she meets. She can not go through with it as it seems too perfunctory.
This movie examines the morphing of Teresa from a prudish Austrian tourist to a woman who opens up to her sensuality with the young...
Exploration
This movie was perhaps an exploration of a paradox in one woman's thinking. Her conundrum was that she wanted to be seen for more than just a body, yet that is all she could see in her male playmates. Being unwilling to see men as more than a body, each encounter with a new man reflected her limited perspective on men. She would scold and instruct her male playmates if they didn't treat her as something more than a body. It was particularly bizarre to watch her complain to her girlfriends that men could not see her for more than a body while that was all she thought they were. When one resides in a world of mirrors, aka Earth, can it ever be reasonable to expect the image in the mirror to reflect something other than what one is being?
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