Graphic film on female sex tourists cheered in Cannes - European women sex tourists and African gigolos -
A graphic, unflinching look at the delicate interplay of desire, money and power among European women sex tourists and African gigolos hit the screen yesterday in the Cannes contender "Paradise: Love".
Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, who scandalised cinema's top international showcase five years ago with another take on rich and poor and the sex trade, "Import/Export", this time turns his camera on women as the consumers.
"Paradise: Love" stars Margarethe Tiesel as Teresa, a 50-year-old Viennese single mother of an insolent teenage daughter who needs a break from it all, in a breakout performance cheered by audiences here.
She sets off alone to the white sandy coast of eastern Kenya where she falls in with a group of "sugar mamas", fellow middle-aged women who feel neglected at home and seek the attention of much younger local men in exchange for cash.
"It is about female loneliness that takes hold when you reach a certain age and no longer look like someone from an advert," Tiesel told reporters.
"The exploited begin to exploit in a place where they have power. I don't judge these women, I understand them and I understand completely what they struggle with."
Tiesel, an accomplished stage actress in her first major film role, appears nude through much of the picture and has various on-screen couplings with Kenyan "beach boys" that leave little to the imagination.
She said her faith in Seidl as a director gave her the confidence to expose herself to such an extent.
"Ulrich told me from the beginning, 'Nothing will happen that you don't want to happen, Frau Tiesel'," she said.
Teresa begins tentatively at first, breaking off a tryst with an insistent lover when he goes too fast for her.
But she soon meets Munga (Peter Kuzungu), a dreadlocked charmer and a willing student in the ways of Western seduction.
However as their affair continues, his demands for money become more frequent as he describes the plight of his poor "sister" and her baby.
When Teresa finds out the woman is actually his wife, she flies into a jealous rage and beats him in front of the other guests on the hotel's palm-lined beach.
Duped and disappointed, she steels herself to ferociously pursue beach boys with little regard for their dignity, or her own.
Seidl, one of 22 directors competing for the top prize at Cannes this year -- all of them men, said many Western women were looking for more than a holiday fling, a key difference to male sex tourism in developing countries.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/graphic-film-on-female-sex-tourists-cheered-in-cannes/story-e6frfkui-1226360720257
A graphic, unflinching look at the delicate interplay of desire, money and power among European women sex tourists and African gigolos hit the screen yesterday in the Cannes contender "Paradise: Love".
Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, who scandalised cinema's top international showcase five years ago with another take on rich and poor and the sex trade, "Import/Export", this time turns his camera on women as the consumers.
"Paradise: Love" stars Margarethe Tiesel as Teresa, a 50-year-old Viennese single mother of an insolent teenage daughter who needs a break from it all, in a breakout performance cheered by audiences here.
She sets off alone to the white sandy coast of eastern Kenya where she falls in with a group of "sugar mamas", fellow middle-aged women who feel neglected at home and seek the attention of much younger local men in exchange for cash.
"It is about female loneliness that takes hold when you reach a certain age and no longer look like someone from an advert," Tiesel told reporters.
"The exploited begin to exploit in a place where they have power. I don't judge these women, I understand them and I understand completely what they struggle with."
Tiesel, an accomplished stage actress in her first major film role, appears nude through much of the picture and has various on-screen couplings with Kenyan "beach boys" that leave little to the imagination.
She said her faith in Seidl as a director gave her the confidence to expose herself to such an extent.
"Ulrich told me from the beginning, 'Nothing will happen that you don't want to happen, Frau Tiesel'," she said.
Teresa begins tentatively at first, breaking off a tryst with an insistent lover when he goes too fast for her.
But she soon meets Munga (Peter Kuzungu), a dreadlocked charmer and a willing student in the ways of Western seduction.
However as their affair continues, his demands for money become more frequent as he describes the plight of his poor "sister" and her baby.
When Teresa finds out the woman is actually his wife, she flies into a jealous rage and beats him in front of the other guests on the hotel's palm-lined beach.
Duped and disappointed, she steels herself to ferociously pursue beach boys with little regard for their dignity, or her own.
Seidl, one of 22 directors competing for the top prize at Cannes this year -- all of them men, said many Western women were looking for more than a holiday fling, a key difference to male sex tourism in developing countries.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/graphic-film-on-female-sex-tourists-cheered-in-cannes/story-e6frfkui-1226360720257
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