According to that other arch-provocateur, Werner Herzog, the films of Ulrich Seidl provide audiences ‘ein Blick in die Hoelle’ – a glimpse into hell. Seidl himself has said that ‘hell is us.’

But Seidl’s latest works, an accidental trilogy of films, take their themes from where mankind came from, rather than where they are likely heading:  Paradise.  The only paradise is paradise lost, and since our fall from grace, many of us spend our lives trying to fashion a way back to our unattainable Shangri-La. There is no heaven on earth, only a hell of our own doing, and that hell is often a result of paradise fleetingly realised.

… the milk is sour and the honey spoiled in this Promised Land.

The first film, PARADISE: LOVE is a development of Seidl’s previous immigration films, this time with Westerners travelling to countries in the developing world, in search of something. The growing industry of sex tourism in Kenya, where men prostitute themselves to western women who don’t correspond to their own hemisphere’s aesthetic ideal, brings Theresa (Margarethe Tiesel), to a beach resort in Kenya with other Austrian women. The Kenyan ‘Beach Boys’ stand, separated by a rope line policed by a resort security guard, opposite the pallid, flabby bodies of the western tourists sunning themselves on the beach.

The men are physically scrutinised, objectified, commodified. Yet, despite the initial superficiality of the women’s desires, it soon becomes clear that what they are longing for is a romantic exchange – to feel loved.

Seidl uses Kenya’s colonial past to draw attention to the nature of the relationship that exists between the tourists and the natives. The Austrian tourists patronise the Kenyans about their poor German language skills, and there is a strong element of the civilising and missionary influence that colonial powers brought to bear, in the scenes where Theresa tries to educate the Kenyan men how to properly treat a woman. Contrasting the dark figures of the Kenyans with the doughy bodies of the Austrians, Seidl forms a neat aesthetic cultural comparison, a negative image of each other.

There are moments in the film where Theresa appears to have reached her paradise, but there is always doubt and disbelief. She allows herself to be lied to in order to maintain her illusion. When reality encroaches it becomes clear what her new relationship really is– a market transaction for a service provided.  This builds upon the commodity fetishism exemplified in the brilliant IMPORT/EXPORT – Seidl’s last film.

Of the trilogy, FAITH is the film with the bite and acerbity typical of Seidl.

The Kenyan beach resort provides an image of an actual paradise on earth, yet the milk is sour and the honey spoiled in this Promised Land. A Kenyan man is hired for Theresa’s birthday, and the women are unable to arouse him in their hotel room. As a last resort, the boyish waiter is asked to perform oral sex on Theresa but he refuses, unable to. Even Theresa’s daughter back home cannot be reached by phone. The realisation of one’s wishes and desires is maddeningly just out of reach, a biblical allegory of forbidden fruit; and paradise remains lost.

In PARADISE:FAITH Seidl returns to the inner worlds and spaces of Austrian home life – immaculate on the outside, furnished with seething disquiet inside. A pious catholic nurse Anna Maria (the excellent Maria Hofstätter, her hair pinned up in a severe bun) flagellates herself for the sins of her body, in the lifeless surroundings of her home. As part of a prayer group who declare themselves ‘Storm troopers of the faith’, she goes from house to house with the Wandermuttergottes, a statue of holy mother Mary, trying to convert immigrant families and dishevelled individuals with a view to making Austria a devout Catholic nation once more.  At home, she herself receives a surprise visit from her estranged wheelchair-bound, Muslim husband– a thick black comedic stroke from Seidl, from which the film’s conflict erupts.

FAITH has touches of Seidl’s previous documentary JESUS, DU WEISST (JESUS YOU KNOW), but as well as exploring and exposing systems of faith, the central theme deals with the guilt, longing and sexual drives of the couple. The repression of the body, that is, what is natural to the body, by the Catholic Church goes beyond what might be considered ‘healthy’ and inevitably has the opposite effect. The sexual urges are stronger than the briars that bond them, and Seidl demonstrates this beautifully in a scene which has naturally been condemned as ‘blasphemous’ by an Italian media defending a church that has made sex taboo and is itself mired in scandal.

Seidl’s cinematic expression of this point is interesting. Theresa locks the neighbour’s cat (which she is looking after) away, out of sight in the cellar of the house; imprisoning her animal nature. On the way home she discovers an orgy taking place in the bushes, resembling something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, as the desires at the edges of her subconscious manifest themselves in reality. Far less ugly, less real, is the sanitised, beatific love offered by a relationship with Jesus.

Each film presents a dysfunction, a product of modern society’s malaise.

The conflict of ideologies between the Islamic world and the Christian is played out figuratively, yet what is more interesting is how the husband and wife use their religious beliefs as an excuse for cruelty to each other. The conflict between faith and the body, especially for a religion which simultaneously venerates, cannibalises and punishes it, can only lead to the collapse of this paradise in the face of primal drives and desires. Of the trilogy, FAITH is the film with the bite and acerbity typical of Seidl.

In contrast, HOPE is a tender and confusing love story. Melanie (Melanie Lenz), the daughter of LOVE’s Theresa and the niece of FAITH’s Anna Maria is sent to a fat camp to lose weight with other obese children. The rounded bodies of the children contrast against the stark, straight lines of the camp surroundings. They are rigidly drilled by an exacting sports trainer (Michael Thomas, also of IMPORT/EXPORT) who lectures them in the importance of discipline. Finding themselves outcast by society, because they don’t conform to a body ideal, the teenagers find comfort and happiness amongst each other. Their frank discussions about sex and romantic ideals mirror those of the adults of LOVE.

Melanie falls for the much older, unconventional figure of the camp doctor (Joseph Lorenz) who looks for all the world like a retired bird of prey. A forbidden attraction develops, and an unfulfilled yearning for one another. Seidl depicts a controversial and, to most of society, unsettling relationship sympathetically and honestly. By doing so he removes traditional views of good and evil, to reveal the humanity in such a situation. It is this humanity which characterises the Paradise trilogy, a development for Seidl. His usual fascination for exploring power relationships here reveals a delicate and constantly teetering balance. As with his other works, the traversing of borders – internal and external – is a central tenet. In PARADISE, those borders are imposed by religion, self and society and what lies on the other side is likely forbidden. After crossing there is no return.

Like Bosch, a painter he admires, he is interested in holding a mirror up to the viewer.

Each film presents a dysfunction, a product of modern society’s malaise. As with previous films, the corporeal reveals much of the spiritual. The body appears as commodity, as curse and as a product of Western avarice and neglect. Nudity, dance, sex and prayer reveal much about the character of those featured in his films. Seidl himself has said that he finds praying a more intimate act than sex. The Vienna Actionists, a short-lived Austrian 20th Century art movement, could be an influence. Art and the politics of transgression could easily be a subtitle to Seidl’s work. Most striking and recognisable is Seidl’s obsessive symmetrical composition, a rigid order and aestheticism that seem connected with Austrian fastidiousness and routine. He says it is taken from the influence of a Catholic upbringing and that his compositions resemble altar pieces.

The Paradise Trilogy is a cinematic triptych, Seidl’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, and bears its religious influences like a cross – each of the films are named after the Christian virtues of Love, Faith and Hope, the fall from Eden of the first film, the crucifixion imagery of the chubby kids dangling from the gym bars, those trying not to be led into temptation. Like Bosch, a painter he admires, he is interested in holding a mirror up to the viewer. The Marxist elements present in IMPORT/EXPORT are in PARADISE to be pulled out: commodification, objectification, alienation and the products created by a sick society. However, as an ex-Catholic, Seidl only wishes to reflect mankind, not condemn it. He knows that only God can do that.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaMw3e7fEV4