Paradise: Love/Paradies: Liebe (2012) - Woman's love safari proves fertile ground for Seidl drama

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European women enjoy drinks, the ocean and local male attention on this poster for Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love

Our plus-sized, love-starved heroine leaves her teenage daughter back in their home in Austria to go on a solo vacation to Africa, where the local men simply adore the middle-aged European woman "as they are!" - Or do they now also...?

 

Paradise: Love is written by Veronika Franz (Import Export (2007)) and great Austrian filmmaker, co-writer/producer/director Ulrich Seidl (Models (1999)). It it the first film in his Paradise trilogy, also comprised by Paradise: Faith/Paradies: Glaube (2012) and Paradise: Hope/Paradies: Hoffnung (2013). The title is a literal translation of the original German title.

Seidl's film about female sex tourism ultimately becomes a reflection of the fundamentally unjust layout of the world, - both as it has become arranged by man but also how it is handed to each one of us from God's or nature's hands. Watching Paradise: Love, I also couldn't help but wonder what might have been different if the film had looked into male sex tourism instead of female. 

Margarete Tiesel (Sargnagel - Der Film (2021)) is without vanity and fear in her lead performance, and Seidl (and cinematographers Edward Lachman (Carol (2015)) and Wolfgang Thaler (Toulouse (2018, TV movie))) capture a lot of absurd comedy with their visual mastering and eye for images, so that the film in periods is also pretty funny. It is also tender, sad, though-provoking and remarkably empathetic. If any of the individuals in the story are to be judged, that job is obviously left up to us.

Paradise: Love is an outstanding film with a couple of scenes that last a really long time, but which in doing so reveal something about the relations between the people involved, which is only possible due to their length. Something about the flux of exploitation in unnatural romantic relations.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Reportedly 3.6 mil. €, approximately 3.8 mil. $

Box office: 1.7 mil. $

= Mega-flop (returned 0.44 times its cost)

[Paradise: Love premiered 18 May (Cannes Film Festival, main competition) and runs 120 minutes. Shooting took place from October 2009 - September 2010 in Austria and Kenya, back-to-back with the other two films in the trilogy. They were initially planned to be one film but the length and other factors made Seidl realize that they should be released as three films. The film opened #84 to a 6k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #78 and in 4 theaters, grossing 24k $ (1.4 % of the total gross). The film's 3 biggest markets were Germany with 698k $ (41.1 %), Austria with 448k $ (26.4 %) and Spain with 165k $ (9.7 %). The film lost the Palme d'Or to Amour. It was also nominated for a European Film award, among other honors. Seidl returned with Paradise: Faith/Paradies: Glaube (2012). Tiesel returned in 2 TV and a short credit prior to her theatrical return in Das Pferd auf dem Balkon (2012). Paradise: Love is certified fresh at 78 % with a 6.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Paradise: Love?