Paradise: Hope

Paradise: Hope is the final film in Austrian director Ulrich Seidl's loose, semi-improvised trilogy that also includes Paradise: Love and Paradise: Faith (both reviewed in VL-9/13). This last film features a tenuous connection to Paradise: Love, which was about Austrian female sex-tourists in Kenya, since while her single mom is away on an African adventure, overweight adolescent Melanie (Melanie Lenz) is sent to a "diet camp" in the Austrian hinterlands. In between exercise regimens and bonding with her roommates in secret food raids on the cafeteria, Melanie develops a severe crush on one of the principal faculty members, a trim, middle-aged, nameless doctor (Joseph Lorenz). Troublingly, the man returns her fascination, meeting in his office for wordless glances and secret touching (sessions that threaten to grow ever more erotic and dangerous), a quasi-affair that is an open secret to the other girls. Some may find Seidl's muted resolution a cop-out compared to the directly confrontational narratives in his two other films, but it meshes nicely as part of the set. Despite the diet camp angle, the hefty Teutonic maidens here—played by non-pros—seem perfectly and refreshingly comfortable in their own ample, non-Hollywood skins. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a photo gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for a fine foreign film.] (C. Cassady)