Paradies: Liebe (2012) Reviews

• As well-thought as it is painful to watch....

  Ehrgeiz2013-01-15

  HEAVY SPOILERS Teresa, a Austrian woman in the age of about 50, spends her holidays in a Kenyan beach resort. She meets there her disgustingly horny friends, and soon it is clear, that all the holidays are about is to get sex with young black men. Teresa is a little reluctant first, not knowing how to get in touch. This changes quickly, when she ends up in a cheap motel with the first of the many intrusive street merchants/de-facto male prostitutes. He treats her too harsh so she leaves in horror before intercourse starts. Though agonized at first, she meets the next day the softer and seemingly more romantic Munga, with whom she spends two days drinking, smoking dope and having sex. Munga starts to have steadily increasing financial demands, covered up by stories tho help relatives who are sick and in need. When Teresa refuses to give him more money, he forbids her to touch him and hides from her the next day. You can run, but never hide - soon she discovers at the beach, that his "sister" she got to know earlier is actually his wife, and berates him, rips his rastas and beats him in a humiliating way at the public beach - only to have sex with the next merchant later that day. This time, she gives that guy money without second thought, when he tells her, that he needs it for the treatment of his brother who "just" happened to have a motorcycle accident. The climax is Teresas birthday. While her teenage daughter does not give her a phone call, even when she reminds her on the mailbox for that, her Austrian friends have a "surprise". They try to start a sex party and have one Kenyan man with them, who strips for them. The four elder women try to heat him up, by stripping themselves, getting touchy e.g., so that he will get an erection - without success. Later, when the friends left, Teresa tries to have sex with a little shy clerk of the club, whom he seem earlier when she and another friend make fun of him in a little offensive way. Teresa throws him out angrily, when he refuses to lick her pussy. Then she cries. Seidls "paradise love" is a multidimensional movie, who is definitely hard to watch for the viewer. Especially the sex scenes are kind of an endurance test, for several reasons. You see the extremely obese Teresa partly or fully naked, and some of her friends. Also, while you never see the actual intercourse, the scenes are very long, and they deal mainly about, how Teresa kind of negotiates in an awkward way, what the males shall do and not (for example, how to touch her titties). While many other viewers say that they feel more for the Teresa towards the end of the movies, I feel different. When her need for a little romanticism is put to a test by Munga and she learns how prostitution there works, she becomes kind of mean, and even more demanding for cheap sex. In between she deals - towards her friends and the men - with her self-pity, telling them how ugly she is. The whole prostitution business is shown very realistic here, and not so much different how it works for men. I like how Seidl shows, despite their is a "mutual business agreement", it does not really work out many times. The Austrian women here are, despite sex-hungry, often a little racist and many times openly offensive towards the Kenyans. The interesting thing is, that the environment in that very touristic place supports that attitude. The most impressive picture, to me, is early in the movie: On one side, in the club, the all-white tourists laying on their sun lounges, on the other side, at the start of the beach, the lurking street merchants, just separated by a little white line - guarded by a paramilitary looking black guard of the club. The imagery is great, anyways; the camera man of this has a very good feeling how to use light and manages, f.e., to show the dream-like beach in a bright, but also cold and threatening light, one time. This movie is not fun, never mind what other critics say, and though some parts of it are very satirical, I think, it goes more in the drama direction - with a main character, that is hard to like. Anyway, it is strong, powerful movie, but only for those people, who like to look in the depths of human society, enjoy highly realistic movies, or like movies where you can think a lot about.

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• Remarkable film about sex tourism in Africa for 50+ women

  JvH482012-10-25

  I saw this film at the Ghent filmfestival 2012. We were told that it was the first of three related films, the two successors to be named 'Paradise: Faith' (already released), and 'Paradise: Hope' (to be released in 2013). Quote from festival announcement: "On Kenya's beaches they are known as 'sugar mamas': European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian woman, travels to this vacation paradise. 'Paradise: Love' tells of older women and young men, of Europe and Africa, and of the exploited, who end up exploiting others." The festival screening took place in a fully booked venue (225 seats). More than half (very unusual) of the people stayed for the final Q&A with the principal actor (Margarete Tiesel), and there were (also unusual) many relevant questions. She admitted upfront that she had not read the script prior to shooting (though she did after wards). She is a professional actor, but the African boys are all amateurs. What struck me the most when watching this film, is that the "boys" never ask money for their "services" in a direct way. Rather they always seem to have a family member in financial difficulties, badly in need of financial support, medical bills being the most common story. We see that happen on Terese's first trip outside the hotel, where her "boy" takes her to his sister (not really, as we see later on), and subsequently a school teacher. Each one has a sad story and needs money. And when she does not cough up enough money, the boy refuses to be touched anymore. On her second trip Teresa seems very aware of all this, recognizing it as standard operating procedure. She starts playing along without feeling awkward about it, and gradually appears to have found her way in this "game". In the final Q&A the subject "exploitation" came about several times, apparently without easy answers. It is not exploitation per se, when both sides look happy with the arrangement. She talked with several other women there with ample experience in the matter. Some bought for instance a motor bike for her African "lover", or even a house, and travel a few times per year to the area. The "boys" speak one of the usual European languages (English, German, etc); which one is dependent on the area. Yet, while the story progresses, we nevertheless observe a certain language barrier, several times causing misunderstandings about mutual intentions. All in all, this is a remarkable feature film bordering on a documentary about sex tourism. We have heard about sex tourism in Thailand, particularly for men. This time it is about women with money to spend. The film clearly demonstrates to us how it works. What the films shows is very explicit, even to the extent that we see Teresa explaining to the "boy" how she prefers to be touched, and we closely observe him learning which way works best for her. This scene marks the duality of their respective roles, not parasitic but rather symbiotic. Showing all this in a natural way, without too much embarrassment for us viewers, is an achievement in itself. I scored a 5 (out of 5) for the audience award when leaving the theater.

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• Lust is all you need

  xWRL2013-06-14

  Some white middle-aged German-speaking women tourists seek sex from male youths on a beach in Kenya--what could go wrong? This movie vividly documents the repercussions of living out sexual fantasies without thinking of the other person. The location shots make clear the disparity between the visitors and the local people. The tourists' hotel aspires to luxury yet it's sad and artificial, with live entertainment that looks sadly out of place. There's a (literal) dividing line between the hotel and the beach, dividing "Europe," as one person calls it, from Africa. At one point, the main character wishes out loud that her sex boys would look deeply into her eyes and see her soul rather than merely performing sex in exchange for money. It's the perfect irony, since this woman and her tourist friends show no human regard for the young men they use for sex. The locales and the situations are exotic. The contrasts we see are eye-opening. Here is a movie produced without frills that promises nonetheless to leave a lasting impression.

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• Purgatory: logical light

  chaos-rampant2013-10-01

  We enter here a paradisaical world with this woman, a middle-aged Austrian who's gone to Kenya on vacation. We enter as she does, strangers, fascinated. There is no transition to this new world, no waiting on airports, no planning for the journey, we are immediately swept as if by the urge to be there. Once there we see as she does, stylized images, arranged symmetries. In the hotel resort there are trivial games, senile safety, control: the Africans are confections to be toyed with and enjoyed, ranges for the eye to roam. The question that looms is is she there for the encounter and surprise or merely looking for images to bring home to a dull life? You'll see this early in the metaphor with the monkey that takes her bait but refuses to be photographed, eluding her. More importantly: are we here on cinematic vacation or to come to an understanding? Out in the streets there is a more palpable tension however; all about baring yourself to be seen and the quest for meaning. I like the subject, the lush Africa, the sexual frankness, the fact that sex and meaning are sublimated in a viewing space between people. So I believe this could have been tremendously powerful stuff in the right hands. Alas the filmmaker is Austrian and this means that we see in the same stark light they bring to everything they do: from logic to politics to music. What does this mean, a stark light ? It means every encounter has to be sooner rather than later exposed as meaningless, because the ultimate point here is some void at heart, the same that originally creates the journey there, which is also the filmmaker's. It means that he can't let go, and not allowing himself to yet know, coast on the tension of an encounter that may be false, that most probably is false, yet like movies and love work in life, that we can throw ourselves in it as if it is real and in doing so imbue it with truth, weave it from air. A Mood for Love with a question behind each glance. I'm dreaming of the film Cassavetes would do: all about building to this more or less certain horizon of betrayal with momentary truths, small moments like passing a joint in the dark, riding this tension, hiding the logical knowledge. So I lament this because his failure is the same as his heroine's failure to find fulfillment. He resorts to more obvious stuff, merely chronicling the lack: disillusionment, loneliness and how that gives rise to dehumanizing spectacle as in the scene where the woman is offered in her hotel room a witless African to tease and fondle. Ordinary. You can even see this reluctance in his camera when now and then he lets it wander: we don't deeply feel the textures, we are never truly enmeshed in the world. Again this is as much cinematic translation of the woman's pov as it is inescapable worldview for the filmmaker, the same boxed worldview that Herzog runs from by journeying to the edges to throw himself on the manifold strangeness of things, letting his eye roam, staging boats tugged over hills so it can become real.

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• (No) Paradise: (No) Love

  RainDogJr2012-12-08

  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

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