PARADISE
US, 1982, 96 minutes, Colour.
Willie Aames, Phoebe Cates.
Directed by Stuart Gillard.
Paradise is an explicit reworking of Randall Kleiser's The Blue Lagoon. Model Phoebe Cates and television actor (Eight is Enough) Willie Ames resemble Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields. The storyline is followed almost exactly, with the omission of the childhood of the couple. The setting is different: Baghdad and the desert in 1823. There are touches of the Arabian adventures. However, the emphasis is given to the adolescents discovering one another, especially sexuality. The film opens promisingly but soon the focus on the well manicured, well coiffured, elegantly dressed and undressed hero and heroine takes predominance. Their language becomes more and more that of the '80s, destroying the credibility of the story. The film is clearly aimed at the teenage audience.
1. An entertaining film in itself? Its explicit parallelling of Blue Lagoon in content and style? The audience aimed at? The quality of the production?
2. The use of Israeli locations? The re-creation of the 19th. century? Baghdad? The desert? The oases and coastlines? The atmosphere of the desert ?and of Paradise? Musical score? Song and lyrics?
3. The presence of hero and heroine in Baghdad? The heroine and her English chaperone? The hero and his strictly religious American parents? The colour of Baghdad, the exotic isolation in the East, the trade routes? The attack by the Jackal in the marketplace and the capture of slaves? Setting tone and expectations for the film?
4. The caravan train, travel through the desert? The boy and the girl encountering one another? Intimations of sex themes ? the boy watching the belly dancer? Seeing the girl bathe? The background of 19th. century strictness ?especially the religious Americans and their emphasis on sexuality and sin?
5. The peace before the massacre? The massacre and its horror? Hero and heroine escaping through the well? The grief? The chaperone and his travelling with the couple? His protecting them? His capture, torture and death? His not betraying them? The Jackal and his pursuit of the couple for vengeance? His capturing the heroine and her being rescued? The continued pursuit? The stand against the Jackal and his being killed?
6. The couple and their travelling together? Their initial reserve? Audience expectations of the breaking down of the reserve, the sexual curiosity? The bonds between the two? The caves and their surviving? The death of the Jackal? Their lyrical interlude by the sea, Paradise? Their final escape and reaching the city?
7. The plausibility of the plot and characterisation: the basic situation, the contrivances to throw the boy and the girl together, the intimations of sexuality by decor, dress, undress? The 20th century language and attitudes? The focus on the girl and her beauty? Her curiosity? The boy and his awakening, with moral background?
8. The theme of Paradise and the oasis in the desert? The sea? The land of biblical Paradise? The scriptural references? The lyrical aspects of Eden innocence and sinlessness? Their relationship, caution, curiosity, sexual fulfilment? The idyllic nature of the play, surviving. swimming etc.? The travelogue touch to the beauty of Paradise? The interruption of the heroine's being captured and their having to escape?
9. The introduction of the chimps and the irony of Eden? Overtones of evolution and Adam and Eve stories? Tongue-in-cheek presentation of man's ancestors? The chimps behaving like the humans? The stressing of the parallels? The birth of the monkey?
10. The pregnancy and the hope for the child?
11. The Arabs? The character of the Jackal and his imperiousness? The credibility of the hero shooting him with the arrow? The contrast with the antagonistic attitudes of the English and Americans? Their presumption? Their talking down to the Arabs? Comments about civilisation?
12. The basic idea of the film and its attractiveness? Exploration of youth and sexuality? Survival? An exploitation entertainment?
