PARADIES

Austria, 2013, 90 minutes, Colour.
Melanie Lenz, Joseph Lorenz.
Directed by Ulrich Siedl.

Austrian writer-director, Ulrich Seidl, is noted for hard, even harsh, dramas that don’t draw back on sexuality and violence (Imports/Exports).

This film, subtitled Hoffnung/Hope, is the third in a trilogy, Paradise: Faith, Paradise:Love, Paradise: Hope. Actually, hope is not particularly in evidence.

Melanie is 13 and lives with her devout mother who enrolls her in a special camp for overweight children. The regimen is very disciplined with lots of exercise (which, by the end of the film does not seem to have made much appreciable difference despite so many scenes of activity). What we see of the others is that they are agreeable enough. Melanie shares a room with three other girls. They chat, they gossip, they giggle, they smoke on the sly, they play spin the bottle.

There are three people on the staff. A vigorous young woman trainer, the tough male trainer and the doctor.

It is the doctor who becomes a focus, especially for Melanie where he makes jokes, plays with her at interviews. She falls for him – and he has been grooming her. He places her and himself in some compromising situations. When Melanie and another girl go out on the town for a night, drinking, going to a club, dancing, more drinking and being molested by a customer, she has to be rescued by the doctor.

At the end, Melanie does not seem to have learned any lessons. Hope? That she will get over this episode – and that she will lose some weight.

Though serious, the film seems thin and slight.

1. The third in the trilogy up? The work of the director? His perspectives? Serious and grim? Humor and the touches of irony?

2. The location of the camp, the dormitories, the exercise areas, the pool, the woods, the musical score?

3. Melanie’s story? Her mother, her aunt and religiosity? Melanie being fat, lazy, eating, snacking, listening to music, going to the camp? The aim of her being there? Losing weight? Other benefits?

4. The camp, the trainer and his manner, insistence on discipline, the names and numbers, his control, treatment, the exercises?

5. The camp, the dietitian, marching, her successful clients?

6. The camp and the doctor, The tests, the interviews, his private life, Melanie, talking, flirting, his grooming her?

7. Melanie and the other girls, in the dormitory, Verena, the chanting, divorces, sexual encounters, eating? Smoking?

8. Melanie and the doctor, the infatuation, the talking, permissiveness, the doctor making advance’s, tension in kissing, the walk in the woods, his going to her room, her undergarments, the kiss?

9. The effect on Melanie, the doctor and his stopping the relationship, his professional behavior?

10. Melanie, the exercise continuing, any change?

11. The portrait of the other boys and girls, their condition, the exercise, success and failure?

12. The subtitle of the film: hope? How much hope for Melanie and the others?