Paradise: Hope (15.)
Directed by Ulrich Seidl.
Starring Melanie Lenz, Joseph Lorenz, Verena Lehbauer and Michael Thomas. In German with subtitles. 97 mins
Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy reaches a predictably grim conclusion with this tale of a young girl who is sent off to a rather old fashioned fat camp, lots of exercise and diet lectures, for the summer. If Michael Haneke has taught us anything it is surely beware of Austrian filmmakers promising paradise and if I am repeating lines (not even particularly good lines) from my review of the first instalment of the trilogy that seems appropriate for a filmmaker content to hammer away at the same points in every film he makes.
Seidl has a good eye for coldly comic compositions. The camera remains static and at a distance to better capture the absurdity of their flabby exertions, but the comic effect of long images of tubby kids dangling from gym wall bars or grimly hiking in line past the camera is deadened by the repetition.
Melanie (Lenz) is the stocky, 13-year-old daughter of Teresa, the middle aged divorcee we saw in Paradise: Love, going off on holiday to chase young black flesh in Kenya. In the brief glimpses we saw of Melanie in that film she was the stereotype bored, apathetic, scowling teenager always on her phone and surly dismissive of her mother. Here though she is presented as being quite sweet and open, at least in comparison with some of her more world weary room mates. During her stay she becomes emotionally attached to the middle aged camp doctor (Lorenz.)
With Seidl you always fear the worst, but he’s a little kinder here, prepared not to see the absolute worst in everyone though that somehow makes it even more bleak. Seidl’s dry, detached world view is not one that is rich enough to sustain three films released in quick succession. Last films in trilogies rarely satisfy. Kieslowski could get his third installment to build into a summation of the series but Hope is a weak reiteration of what has preceded: it is more Return of the Jedi than Trois Couleurs: Rouge.
Directed by Ulrich Seidl.
Starring Melanie Lenz, Joseph Lorenz, Verena Lehbauer and Michael Thomas. In German with subtitles. 97 mins
Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy reaches a predictably grim conclusion with this tale of a young girl who is sent off to a rather old fashioned fat camp, lots of exercise and diet lectures, for the summer. If Michael Haneke has taught us anything it is surely beware of Austrian filmmakers promising paradise and if I am repeating lines (not even particularly good lines) from my review of the first instalment of the trilogy that seems appropriate for a filmmaker content to hammer away at the same points in every film he makes.
Seidl has a good eye for coldly comic compositions. The camera remains static and at a distance to better capture the absurdity of their flabby exertions, but the comic effect of long images of tubby kids dangling from gym wall bars or grimly hiking in line past the camera is deadened by the repetition.
Melanie (Lenz) is the stocky, 13-year-old daughter of Teresa, the middle aged divorcee we saw in Paradise: Love, going off on holiday to chase young black flesh in Kenya. In the brief glimpses we saw of Melanie in that film she was the stereotype bored, apathetic, scowling teenager always on her phone and surly dismissive of her mother. Here though she is presented as being quite sweet and open, at least in comparison with some of her more world weary room mates. During her stay she becomes emotionally attached to the middle aged camp doctor (Lorenz.)
With Seidl you always fear the worst, but he’s a little kinder here, prepared not to see the absolute worst in everyone though that somehow makes it even more bleak. Seidl’s dry, detached world view is not one that is rich enough to sustain three films released in quick succession. Last films in trilogies rarely satisfy. Kieslowski could get his third installment to build into a summation of the series but Hope is a weak reiteration of what has preceded: it is more Return of the Jedi than Trois Couleurs: Rouge.
