Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Andres-Camara Otherwise, I get in the first few minutes of the movie and I get over thirty minutes at least. It is repetitive until satiety. Extend the scenes to excess. To the extreme of getting bored a lot. Everyone knows what this tourism is about, it has not told us anything new, but it also makes it boring. It does not manage to convey grief at any moment, and it looks that the situations would have to give it.The only good thing he has, is that the actors, all, seem to be living their lives really, but is that even so the director, it bores you.He has a horrible picture. He has a white light constantly when he is counting something sad, I do not know why it should be so.The address, I do not know if it exists, I would say no. If it exists, why do not you know it's too long? I think that someone put the camera in general plane and so rolled everything and also sometimes badly composed.You will say that you talk a lot about a social issue in Northern Europe and Africa, but I think that talking about it could make it more enjoyable, which does not mean that you leave the cinema happy.

mamlukman I watched this for a very particular reason: last year I began researching conversions to Islam among Westerners. I found that 75% are women between 15-24. That seemed a bit odd to me...then I read a French report on Islamic extremists--most were, surprisingly, women converts! Then I began thinking about cults...the Manson Family...mostly women...Branch Davidians....mostly women....and so on. Then there is the phenomenon of the kidnapped girls, some of whom had the freedom to run away but refused to do so (Elizabeth Smart, et al.). While watching "Beatles: Eight Days a Week," which is mainly about the concerts the Beatles gave, it struck me that virtually the entire audience was young girls, all hysterical. Why???? Then, when thinking one day about Obama's mother (married a Kenyan student when she was very young, then married an Indonesian), I stumbled across this sub-culture of women who search out exotic locales for sex tourism. It's not a new phenomenon, but I'm not sure when it began-- "Heading South," about female sex tourism is supposedly set in 1979. "Bezness as Usual" is set in Tunisia in present day--but it concerns what happened almost 30 years ago--so c. 1986 or so. "Paradise: Love" is present day, so 2012. I am curious when this phenomenon began--when women as well as men began taking sex holidays. Maybe the sexual revolution of the 1960s unleashed something??? What's up with all these women? If anyone has a clue, please answer in FAQ comments.As for "exploitation," it is not an easy issue. Clearly the power is in the hands of the European/American women. They have the money, they have passports to leave when they're ready, and they seem to be relatively safe. One movie said something like "Tourists don't die." The beach boys on the other hand know exactly what they're getting into. Yeah, you could say they "don't have a choice" but as Sartre said, "There is always a choice." And they do have power too--the women get emotionally attached to them; they never, ever get emotionally attached to the women--even if they marry them. They manipulate the women, as "Paradise: Love" shows so well. The hero of this particular movie is Joseph (or something like that) the bartender. At the end of the movie he says he "wants" to have sex with her but "is not used to" doing such things. In the end, his reluctance gets him kicked out of the room. But he is the moral force, such as it is, of the movie.If this is the face that the West presents in these countries, it's no wonder the West is hated and despised. But the women--in all these movies--don't give a second's thought to that. It's all about them personally, and the larger picture is not even on the horizon.This is a good movie in the sense that it at least tries to take a stab at explaining the women's motivations. A second movie, Dutch, 2016, is "Benzess as Usual," where the son of one of these vacation idylls returns to meet his father. In this case, it's Tunisia. But exactly the same thing is going on--older women using younger, poor men for sex. And, as hinted at in "Headed South" in this case the beach boy is taken to the Netherlands and then Switzerland (by different women!). He marries both, but of course it ends badly. A third movie in this genre is "Heading South." In this case, it's French and American women in Haiti. (But it happens throughout the Caribbean, esp. Jamaica). The location changes, the story is the same. There are also numerous youtube videos on this theme. And then of course there are books like "The White Masai" about a young (!) Swiss woman who marries a Masai--and not an educated, Westernized one, but a native from a village living in a mud hut. It's beyond bizarre. She is "shocked" when things don't work out. I am simply speechless.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) Do not be fooled by the title of this movie or by what you see at the surface during these 2 hours. Despite the music, the noises and the bright colors, this is a pretty depressing film. And "depressing" does refer to almost everybody in here. First of all, we have a main character who is looking for true love, but finds pretty much nothing but scam until she joins in the exploitation at the end. Then there is the African men. Their struggles do not necessarily have to do with emotion, but with hoping for a better life and not being afraid of abusing other people emotionally as a consequence of their poverty. And finally, it's the other Austrian women in here. If they do what they do with these African men, it tells me that their life back at their home must be truly unsatisfying and out of balance."Paradise: Love" is the first film from Ulrich Seidl's "Paradise" trilogy. Obviously lots of irony in that title. The other two films are about religion and adolescence/obesity. But back to this one. Seidl was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won Best Picture at the Austrian film Awards. Lead Actress Margarete Tiesel, who carried this film nicely with how likable yet suffering a character she portrayed, won Best Actress at the same event and was also nominated for a European Film award (that went to Riva). The scene when she talks on her daughter's answering machine is pretty heartbreaking. And even if this is probably my least favorite from the trilogy, it was a good watch. No doubt Seidl is among the finest Austria currently has to offer. And even if you do not care for this film or like it in terms of the action, it is still an interesting watch because it takes us into a culture and society that could not be any more different from the one, in which we live. A film that is painful to watch, yet it's difficult to look away. Well done by Seidl and I certainly recommend it.

Ehrgeiz HEAVY SPOILERS Teresa, a Austrian woman in the age of about 50, spends her holidays in a Kenyan beach resort. She meets there her disgustingly horny friends, and soon it is clear, that all the holidays are about is to get sex with young black men. Teresa is a little reluctant first, not knowing how to get in touch. This changes quickly, when she ends up in a cheap motel with the first of the many intrusive street merchants/de-facto male prostitutes. He treats her too harsh so she leaves in horror before intercourse starts. Though agonized at first, she meets the next day the softer and seemingly more romantic Munga, with whom she spends two days drinking, smoking dope and having sex. Munga starts to have steadily increasing financial demands, covered up by stories tho help relatives who are sick and in need. When Teresa refuses to give him more money, he forbids her to touch him and hides from her the next day. You can run, but never hide - soon she discovers at the beach, that his "sister" she got to know earlier is actually his wife, and berates him, rips his rastas and beats him in a humiliating way at the public beach - only to have sex with the next merchant later that day. This time, she gives that guy money without second thought, when he tells her, that he needs it for the treatment of his brother who "just" happened to have a motorcycle accident. The climax is Teresas birthday. While her teenage daughter does not give her a phone call, even when she reminds her on the mailbox for that, her Austrian friends have a "surprise". They try to start a sex party and have one Kenyan man with them, who strips for them. The four elder women try to heat him up, by stripping themselves, getting touchy e.g., so that he will get an erection - without success. Later, when the friends left, Teresa tries to have sex with a little shy clerk of the club, whom he seem earlier when she and another friend make fun of him in a little offensive way. Teresa throws him out angrily, when he refuses to lick her pussy. Then she cries. Seidls "paradise love" is a multidimensional movie, who is definitely hard to watch for the viewer. Especially the sex scenes are kind of an endurance test, for several reasons. You see the extremely obese Teresa partly or fully naked, and some of her friends. Also, while you never see the actual intercourse, the scenes are very long, and they deal mainly about, how Teresa kind of negotiates in an awkward way, what the males shall do and not (for example, how to touch her titties). While many other viewers say that they feel more for the Teresa towards the end of the movies, I feel different. When her need for a little romanticism is put to a test by Munga and she learns how prostitution there works, she becomes kind of mean, and even more demanding for cheap sex. In between she deals - towards her friends and the men - with her self-pity, telling them how ugly she is. The whole prostitution business is shown very realistic here, and not so much different how it works for men. I like how Seidl shows, despite their is a "mutual business agreement", it does not really work out many times. The Austrian women here are, despite sex-hungry, often a little racist and many times openly offensive towards the Kenyans. The interesting thing is, that the environment in that very touristic place supports that attitude. The most impressive picture, to me, is early in the movie: On one side, in the club, the all-white tourists laying on their sun lounges, on the other side, at the start of the beach, the lurking street merchants, just separated by a little white line - guarded by a paramilitary looking black guard of the club. The imagery is great, anyways; the camera man of this has a very good feeling how to use light and manages, f.e., to show the dream-like beach in a bright, but also cold and threatening light, one time. This movie is not fun, never mind what other critics say, and though some parts of it are very satirical, I think, it goes more in the drama direction - with a main character, that is hard to like. Anyway, it is strong, powerful movie, but only for those people, who like to look in the depths of human society, enjoy highly realistic movies, or like movies where you can think a lot about.