Paradise Hope

Paradise Hope is the least ironically named instalment in this trilogy dealing with three dysfunctional women from one Austrian family. This time, director Ulrich Seidl focusses on Melanie (non-professional actress Melanie Lenz), the daughter of Paradise: Love's protagonist Teresa and niece of Faith's Anna Maria. She is a big-boned 13-year-old who spends the summer at a gently authoritarian fat camp for teens where she develops a crush on the resident doctor (Joseph Lorenz). Melanie makes heartbreakingly clumsy attempts to woo him despite a 40-year age gap and assumes that his refusal to sleep with her must be down to her weight. As with all of Seidl's films (both the documentaries, like Animal Love) and the fictional tales, such as Dog Days), the matter-of-fact, highly formalised presentation of ugliness defies the viewer to take a stance on whether he is mocking his subjects, or not. But, he does show an unusual level of empathy here, making this one of his more accessible works.