Paradise: Hope is unfortunately a disappointment compared to its much more envelope-pushing predecessors. As the final installment of the Paradise trilogy, Hope continues to explore the Austrian middle class ennui, this time with the focus on a teenage girl at a fitness camp, who has a crush on the much older camp director. With his trademark style of extremely naturalistic approach, director Ulrich Seidl meticulously, almost painfully documented the mundane training routines going on at the camp, while providing clinical insight into the taboo dynamics between the duo with age gap. What has always made Seidl's works magical lies in its Haneke-ish style on top of a shocking moral dilemma. In Hope, the style is consistent as usual, and the story is potentially one of his most controversial, with an inflammatory premise that could very well push some boundaries, yet Seidl was visibly holding back, probably due to the pedophiliac nature of the relationship. There's nothing wrong with presenting the story in its understated manner, but it ultimately feels like a cop-out when the previous two installments take its subject with so much more extremity and sexual explosion. Watch Fat Girl instead.
