Paradise: Love

Teresa, an Austrian woman in her fifties, goes to Kenya on holiday. There are European women like her on the beach and all of them run the same arrangement: form relationships with young local men, give money and gifts in return, and call it love. Teresa refuses it at first, then tries it, and falls somewhere harder each time. Ulrich Seidl made it as the first part of his Paradise trilogy; most of the cast are not professionals and the scenes rest on improvisation. The camera is symmetrical and fixed and nothing is softened. The film does not draw the direction of exploitation in one line, but it leaves no doubt about where the power sits. It played in competition at Cannes and caused argument. Who it is for: viewers who like Europe's hard realist cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who must avoid explicit sex and scenes of humiliation.