Paradise: Hope review

The concluding part of Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy

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“If you're happy and you know it, clap your fat,” sing the teenagers at a strictly regimented summer weight-loss camp, amid the beautiful surroundings of the Austrian Alps.

The concluding film in Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy, Hope focuses on lonely 13-year-old Melli (Melanie Lenz) – the daughter of single mum Teresa from Paradise: Love – who falls in love with the establishment’s senior doctor (Joseph Lorenz).

Think Lolita retold from the young heroine’s perspective.

Against the odds this is a sometimes droll and surprisingly tender affair, and a fitting end to Seidl’s magnum opus.

Tom Dawson
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