Director: Ulrich Seidl
Talent: Melanie Lenz, Joseph Lorenz, Verena Lehbauer
Release Date: 2nd August 2013
Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy concludes with the story of Melanie (Melanie Lenz), an adolescent girl sent to a summer diet camp where she develops a crush on the middle-aged staff doctor (Joseph Lorenz), that transpires to be reciprocated. Seidl’s subject matter is characteristically troubling, tackling body fascism, teenage sexuality and (implicit) child abuse with a familiar, unflinching style that always remains compassionate towards the put-upon young lead. If the diet camp is a place in which patterns of behaviour are established in order to be reproduced in the wider world, then Melanie endures more than enough humiliation, objectification and emotional exploitation ― and this is only at the hands of the staff! ― to prepare her for life as an adult woman with a body culturally considered to be undesirable. Seidl’s tableau framing renders the banal cruelty of the diet camp in an amplified, monolithic state, shot through with a genuine and exceptional empathy. Brilliant, difficult filmmaking.
