Introduction
This is a post that is a repurposing of an old-school Mini-Review Round-Up post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. Enjoy!
Paradise: Love
In a very naturalistic and non-sensationalist way Paradise: Love seeks to explore the sex tourism trade. It does so through the guise (and eyes) of a woman who is new to such things. She goes from Austria to Kenya in search of a new experience. Being new and not-yet-jaded she runs the gamut from being shy; falling for lies; falling in love; trying to deal with it coolly, heartlessly; and feeling regret.
Where the film finds its difficulties is that it plays things so close to the vest, in a very authentic seeming way, at times, in spite of a great lead performance by Margarete Tiesel, it’s at times hard to decipher if she’s willingly being duped or just duped. The pace suffers a bit through act two despite being usually engaging.
The conclusion feels proper and earned but the climactic sequence, a birthday rent boy party attended by all her “friends” achieves what it seems to want (an uncomfortable ambivalence and tenuous balance between expose and exploitation), but it, too, lingers well after its point has been made.
This is one of the films where it’s about the journey not the destination. It is in the journey where it issues lie.
The Movie Rat 