The first of a trilogy about a traveling Austrian family, Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Love” follows a middle-aged woman named Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) who travels to Kenya as a sex tourist. That not only describes the plot of the movie but a fair amount of its details: Much of the runtime follows the bumbling, portly Teresa as she meets a dozen men, plays along with their advances and gullibly forks over dough when they request it. That might sound unbearably redundant were it not for the delicacy that Seidl brings to the material and the powerfully naked performance — always figuratively, sometimes literally — that Tiesel brings to the character. A story that at first plays like a lark eventually develops into a deeply sad look at soul-searching gone very wrong. It’s the ultimate testament to the notion that money can’t buy love. Criticwire grade: A [Eric Kohn]
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