Paradise: Love

Fifty-year-old Viennese Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) feels trapped in her monotonous life. Her chubby body has little appeal to men, and even from her always listless daughter she doesn't get the love she so lacks. A vacation in Kenya is now supposed to offer a little balm for her soul filled with dreariness. As soon as she arrives at her hotel on the picturesque coast, she discovers that she is not invisible to the men here. But unlike her new holiday acquaintances, who buy sex with young black beach boys as so-called Sugarmamas. But at first Teresa doesn't believe in wanting to be a sugarmama either. Her first attempt to be sexually pampered by a young man is aborted after only a few touches. But then she meets Munga (Peter Kazungu), an attentive young man who does not press her and makes her feel genuinely interested in her. But after a few pleasant hours together, this impression changes abruptly.

Paradise: Love is the beginning of Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy, which in 2013 still includes the films Paradise: Faith and Paradise: Hope will follow. As with his earlier works such as Import Export, Seidl again proves to be an extremely challenging director with Paradies: Love, Seidl again proves to be an extremely challenging director who confronts his viewers with uncomfortable and unvarnished truths. The way Teresa and her friends judge the young black men in a kind of meat inspection (He has such nice thighs and such cute ears) or expose a shy waiter to ridicule by encouraging him to speak Austrian is on the one hand repulsive because of its closeness to reality, but on the other hand also funny in an absurd way. It is to Seidl's credit that he establishes through such scenes that Teresa is not only a victim but also a perpetrator.

Interesting is a conversation between Teresa and her friend Inge, who justifies her contribution to sex tourism by saying that she has been disappointed by men all her life and now takes what she wants. Thus, buying sex is interpreted as strength by the women in the film, while they generally view men who indulge in venal love as weaklings or perverted pigs. With scenes like the very special birthday gift for Teresa, however, Seidl obliterates this distinction, making his film more believable but also, precisely, more uncomfortable.

However, Paradise: Love is not a one-sided indictment, but rather an unvarnished glimpse into a world where everyone exploits everyone else for their own ends. It's impressive in some ways, but also depressing and extremely hard to watch. However, Seidl's goal isn't to provide light cinema entertainment either. He wants his viewers to be challenged, to think about and discuss the film. For those who don't want to let themselves be sprinkled in a relaxed way in the cinema, but are looking for challenges that can be extremely dreary and difficult, and for those who appreciate Ulrich Seidl's very special style, Paradise: Love can definitely be recommended. But for those for whom cinema primarily represents an opportunity to escape from reality, this social drama will be difficult to get along with.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp