Paradise: Love (2012)

Two days after watching Michael Haneke's staggering Amour, I checked in with Austria's other tyrannous filmmaker Ulrich Seidl and his latest movie Paradise: Love (or, Paradies Liebe, in Austrian-German). Nominated for the Palme D'or at this year's Cannes Film Festival (where it actually lost out to Amour), it's the first part of a trilogy looking at the despicable sides of human nature (the following two parts will be screened at festivals in 2013).

Just like his other previous works in documentary (Jesus, You Know) and fiction (Dog Days), Love is an infuriating film; whereby we have no idea where the story is going, and seemingly Seidl doesn't have a clue either. Shot in his trademark static mid shots, with copious amounts of skin on show, it's paradoxically beautiful and grotesque. Like a Lucian Freud painting with just as much of his grandfather's' psychoanalytical subtext, to boot.

Margarete Tiesel plays Teresa, a middle aged single parent living in drab suburban Vienna. The first scene sees her smiling from a distance as she watches a class of disabled children fumble-play on a bumper car track. It's a harrowing, typically nasty opening, and really sets the film off in mean spirited territory, with Seidl doing his token unflinching exploitation gimmick.

From here, Teresa decides to leave her daughter behind at fat camp and flee to Kenya for a paradisiac holiday. Meeting up with her Austrian expat friend (Inge Maux), the pair talk in typically colonialist terms about African culture and black men's genitalia. Later, on her own, she's constantly harangued by the pushy salesmen on the beachfront, trying to sell her homemade necklaces and pearls at tourist prices. Although she's reluctant to purchase their crap, she willingly buys into the perilous sex tourism trade, first as a customer, and later as one of it's scammed victims. Bleak in tone, yet idyllically colourful in palette, the proceeding 90 minutes follows a series of degradations Teresa must go through in her troubled pursuit for paradise.

Similarly to his other work, flesh and body politics play a central role to the narrative, character dynamics and control of the movie. Wandering around in flip flops and skimpy bathing suits, Teresa's slightly rotund exterior is used to exaggerate the character's wealth, decadence and presumed dominance over the comparatively slight, underfed and suffering Kenyans. It's a sentiment made painfully clear in one scene where Teresa partakes in an orgy of sorts where three other overweight German/Austrian women force a lean black Kenyan man to perform for their pleasure, and much to his embarrassment.

Whilst this may be the most palatable of Seidl's fiction films, it's certainly not an easy watch. At an excessive two hours, he wallows for too long in the audiences' discomfort without ever given us a worthwhile pay-off. Whilst the landscape is filmed beautifully by regular cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, this bastardised version of Shirley Valentine is a pretty loveless film experience.

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Fmovies: Finally some meaningful film on the repertoire! I loved it although I found it a little bit slow, but I still gave it 7 out of 10. Life in reality is slow, so it is natural.

So is sex. Natural! That is showing in this film. Everyone needs sex and love! So do fat Austrian women. In Austria they probably would not get any, so they have to travel to Kenya. Kenyan are so poor that it is a way to make some money. It is business! Sex tourism! There is so much of it today all over the world. Sad and funny and heartwarming at the same time.

If you want a little bit break from Hollywood, please watch this.

An Austrian woman on holiday in Kenya, is convinced by a fellow country woman to seduce a local boys for the fun of it as they are tasty as an exotic fruit. The hesitant woman eventually gives in and she has a taste of young love. Unaware or perhaps out of naivety that for the local boys, older European women are a good way to supplement their income she spends a bit of time under the illusion that she is loved by an attractive young man. When reality hits, it hurts and this frustrated woman turns her quest from looking for a bit of fun to an odyssey of self-confirmation.

Simple, effective and nicely made this is a beautifully visual thesis on holiday romance.

Paradise: Love fmovies. This film is certainly not for the faint of heart. A woman (a nurse). who is obsessive compulsive about cleanliness and who micromanages her daughter, escapes to Kenya for a vacation. She 'loves' her daughter and she wants 'love' from these male prostitutes. The whole concept is extremely sad. Maybe it is true that this is the human condition for some women but I just found it too offensive to watch. It made me sick to my stomach to see the racism and objectification going on. I disagree with other reviewers' descriptions of the sexual frankness and naturalness. The whole film is fraught with awkwardness and vulgarity. None of these characters is really there for love. It is a docu-drama on sexual exploitation and racism. And it reveals painfully the incredible imbalance of power that exists on this planet as well as the extreme lack of sexual maturity and ability to create intimacy in our lives. Eros permeates everything and is what can lead us to experience true intimacy and ecstasy. But when all is seen as an object for one's own pleasure, for an escape from pain, there is no eros, no love. Of course, the filmmaker isn't trying to show us true love. Obviously, this is about the whole problem of the emptiness in these women's lives. And perhaps it shows men who are into sex tourism just what they're doing better than if it were a male centric sex tourist film. But I find it so flat and I agree with one of the reviewers that that is because the director never takes a moment to allow even a bit of connection, true humanity to shine through. It's hard to find this scenario plausible because I can't believe that the only thing these woman want to do is get laid. But then again, I might be naive. Maybe that is all they want after all.

When reading internet reviews of Paradise: Love (Paradies: Liebe) — the first in a trilogy of films by Ulrich Seidl, never have I been greeted with such a narrow variety of perspectives. From adjectives limited to a spectrum anywhere between grotesque, obese and tubby, comparisons in style between Seidl and fellow Austrian Michael Haneke, to referencing the exact same quote by Werner Herzog (used in describing Seidl's 2011 documentary Animal Love), I could not help but wonder… what the heck is going on? And when did pundits unite in thinking that female sex tourism in cinema would die eight years ago, after Laurent Cantet's Heading South (Vers le sud); a French film based on three middle-aged women and their search of sex and intimacy with Haitian men?

Herzog's candid remark, conflated into a handy, overused critique isn't worth repeating here.

Loneliness, exploitation, the prison room of cultural and self- repression are themes in this Austrian drama. Cruelly soaked in the warm currents of colonial past; Ulrich Seidl meticulously, sincerely, unapologetically paints the portrait of Teresa (Margarete Tiesel) — a 50 year old woman living in Vienna, upper middle-class, divorced mother of a teenager. Most of the film depicts events that gradually unfold during her lone vacation on the shores of Kenya.

Sex tourism is probably only part of the canvas, though. For in the process, it scratches and destroys the heteronormative lenses with which we understand taboos. Written by Seidl and Veronika Franz; Paradise: Love is a film so explicitly honest to the point of being awkward; that most viewers, embarrassed for Teresa, will look away during moments of vulnerability and self-revelation. The camera of cinematographers Edward Lachman and Wolfgang Thaler looks on unflinchingly during a scabrous encounter with her first companion: does he find her attractive? Isn't she too old for him? Why would he want to make love to her — a beached whale with sagging upper glands, belly full of fat, soggy exterior flawed with celluloid? But most pressingly, having considered the social realist tradition of framing with minimum distortion, why would anyone wince and look away when confronted with mirrors reflecting the consequence of corporeality?

This seventeenth feature by the controversial auteur has been slammed, shamed and shunned for being brazen in its visual audacity. Suggestions that Seidl manipulates viewers with exploitative logic are also suspect in affecting the film's overall reception. Yet, it would be prudent to withhold from believing such. In Paradise: Love — seekers, movers, malcontent inhabitants are drenched in the rich, luxurious texture of a sunlit paradise. The narrative path however; doesn't build up to sex, love or Maslowian truth as its payoff; lesser films would.

I have no doubt this film is a difficult watch because Ulrich Seidl forces Teresa (and us) to acknowledge the naive illusions of paradisaical beauty. But in rhythmic throes that oscillate between anguish, ecstasy and depravity — the African rendition of La Paloma; perhaps a bit saddened by its contrast with the ugly, ordinary trading off between flesh and soul — Seidl derides the remarkable irony of what it means to be human. The dewy-eyed bourgeois privilege suffers. I suppose this is the real reason why Paradise: Love can seem so offensive and unglamorous.

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After watching the first part of Ulrich Seidl's PARADISE trilogy you just have to answer to one question to know whether this Austrian director is doing worth watching material or not – "would I like to watch the second part?" And well, I would. There's really nothing quite like this film, for better or worse; although some of themes it touches aren't something we couldn't find elsewhere. It's about a woman, or better said women in their fifties or something who aren't happy – they have never been satisfied with the way they look and with their whole love life.

The first unusual thing is the setting: the African country Kenya. To call this some sort of definitive look at the culture of Kenya would be simplify things very much. It's really just a look at the Kenya that's close to the tourists. Nevertheless is a very rich film for that matter, with a quick learning of part of the culture – it's funny that we get to learn some African phrases that most likely, well one in specific, will make you remember Disney's THE LION KING!

The reason we don't see much of Kenya is that our main character Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) is the representation of a tourist who's not traveling just to know a different part of the world but to find a new part of herself (and to do that she doesn't need to go very far from her hotel). PARADISE: LOVE is one of those films that constantly make you feel sorry for the respective protagonist. Ulrich definitely succeeded in creating a piece where things aren't totally messed up only superficially. Teresa is leaving her country Austria for the paradise of the title. The paradise refers to both the place and the things she believes is up to: a complete sexual freedom in Africa that ultimately could end in an experimentation of love – love is, unlike in Europe, eternal in Africa, says one of the main Kenyan characters

As you can tell, things aren't going to be as good as planned for Teresa. You may be thinking this is therefore a very sad film with the likes of a Todd Solondz film. After all, we have an upper middle class European woman with overweight continually suffering as sadness and dissatisfaction. Like I said, superficially things aren't quite depressing. PARADISE: LOVE is a women-having-crazy-vacation-fun film too – I'm writing this as a guy in his early twenties but if there's an audience that will "get" the film is definitely women in their forties or something close. What we have here is a very feminine point of view.

Therefore its sexual content is unusual as well – I'm pretty sure this film is one of the most, if not the most explicit one of the year, yet we don't have any intercourse scene. It's a take on male prostitution too – this is why, I think, the explicit material is only there to capture those women's lust and, essentially, idea of a real paradise. In other words: there's a lot of male nudity… you've been warned! The film is a deep, and very different sort-of "chick flick"; a sad look at a real issue that sometimes is funny.

*Watched it on 02 December, 2012