2023-10-04 12:08:31
by Maurizio Porro
The German-Lithuanian film by director Boris Kunz is very popular on Netflix, but the story becomes confusing after a good start
“Where do the days go?” asks Cormac Mc Carthy in «The Passenger». Which is to say: where does time go? An (unresolved) attempt at an answer is offered by the “dystopian” film (unfortunately it is now a genre) of a curious German-Lithuanian production “Paradise” by Boris Kunz, very popular on Netflix. We talk about the future as a bargaining chip, the years as a form of economic barter, humanity goes upside down: men and women (only if compatible with each other) can exchange a certain number of years for a certain number of millions in a futuristic clinic.
It starts off as science fiction, but also with a small social implication when it is explained that this “trick” is in vogue among immigrants, especially children, but then this theme is let go, choosing instead the all-round fictional story of a couple from the world future, where a biomedical company has organized the buying and selling of years in exchange for money, altering the registry office and the economy, art and morality, because the rich are the ones who can rejuvenate the most.
Among the employees of AEON there is Max, married to Elena, in a post-apocalypse world, coincidentally Lithuania. When a fire (we will find out later, organized on purpose) burns down their beautiful house, they are forced into the maxi Faustian pact, selling 40 years of their wife. And here begins the thriller part of the film, the least convincing, where the two unfortunates, with a wife who has now suddenly become elderly and depressed (these are not digital cinema tricks, they are two different actresses) run away, rebel, kidnap the one they they believe she is the daughter of the woman who commands the operations. And here, measuring out the twists, the director is keen to point out that good and bad mix, every hypothesis is contradicted.
During a long journey we will have the opportunity to control the human and inhuman dramas of the characters, until the arrival of a group of rebels who serve for a probable sequel to the 117-minute film, which ends with an off-screen lecture inviting us to fight so as not to arrive at a society of this type. Time is always better if you never regret it. The film starts with a nice idea, not a very new one, the hyper-technological society that sells youth with all its hopes, canceling the concept of the future and old age. It starts off well, but then the story in the action part becomes confused and the pre-final is convulsive in its overly repeated twists and turns supported by acting that isn’t Oscar-worthy.
October 4, 2023 (modified October 4, 2023 | 08:10)
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