Paradise is Burning
Three young sisters face life together alone in Mika Gustafson’s Swedish coming-of-age drama.
Image courtesy of Conic
Despite the highly favourable reviews that it is receiving and the significant awards that it has already won, my own response to Mika Gustafson’s first feature is decidedly mixed. What is unquestionable is that one aspect of Paradise Is Burning is brilliantly achieved and initially it looks as though this will carry the film and might enable one to acclaim it a masterpiece.
Although set in a small town somewhere in Sweden, the film’s central portrayal would be equally meaningful wherever it was taking place. We are introduced at once to a household that consists of three sisters whose ages are seven, twelve and sixteen respectively. The oldest of them, Laura (Bianca Delbravo), has long grown accustomed to looking after her younger siblings, Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and Steffi (Safira Mossberg), due to the fact that although theoretically being brought up by their mother she not infrequently goes missing for long periods. That is exactly the situation when the film opens and, while Laura has become adept at running the household, she can only make do by stealing from supermarkets. The one relative around, an aunt (Andrea Edwards), is not helpful and Mira suffers from bullying at school. Furthermore, social services keep telephoning and are now insisting on seeing the mother whose absence has been concealed from them. Laura, hoping to find somebody to stand in and claim to be their mother, is not letting the other children know that an appointment has been set and is only a week away.
This situation which is central to Paradise Is Burning is one very close to what we have seen in other films. In particular one thinks of Sarah Gavron’s Rocks made in 2019 in which the titular figure was a 16-year-old girl with an unreliable mother who is left to look after her 9-year-old brother. That was a fine film and when it concentrates on the three siblings Gustafson's work measures up to it. Indeed, in some respects this new piece is even more remarkable since its female emphasis leads to a portrayal of the bond between the siblings which feels quite extraordinarily authentic. The strongest acting demands fall on Bianca Delbravo because Laura's role is the most detailed and complex, but this is an instance of three exceptional young players not just acting their individual parts persuasively but capturing the sense of being a unit. For all the hardships experienced and despite the times when they find themselves at odds with each other, these children come across as drawing on their kinship in a way which invests their lives with a deep underlying happiness – the paradise of the title in fact even if the threat of the social services stepping in suggests a likely future in which they will be parted and put in separate foster homes.
But if Rocks is in fact by far the better film it is because when it moved beyond the home life of the brother and sister it remained for the most part equally persuasive and engrossing. It's reasonable enough that in a full-length feature like this one (it runs for 109 minutes) each child should be seen in relation to other outside characters, but here misjudgments come in. This applies least to Steffi since, being so young, it is not inappropriate to concentrate on such events as her losing a tooth or finding a playmate of her own age (Ellie Ghanati). There's also a more disturbing scene in which older children teach her swearwords and sexual terms which she has never heard before. When it comes to the 12-year-old, the film shows Mira dealing as best she can with having her first period but quite a lot of time is spent on her supporting her neighbour who is competitive as a karaoke singer (that’s Sasha played by Mitja Siren) and these scenes are not given the extra depth that would truly justify their place.
However, the main cause for criticism is the failure to fill out Laura's relationship with another neighbour, Hanna (Ida Engvoll). The early part of Paradise Is Burning is notable for its total conviction in showing us the lives shared by the siblings in a way that never seems set up. It just feels true. But in contrast the scenes shared by Laura and Hanna which take up a substantial part of the film are too offbeat to be accepted as likely especially when the detail which would explain them is never offered. These two first encounter each other when Hanna aids Laura who is being chased. We soon discover that her pursuer is the owner of a house which Hanna has contrived to enter, not to steal but to experience the atmosphere of a rich lifestyle (a distant echo here of Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film The Bling Ring). That notion which appears to be obsessive might be believable in itself but it turns out that Hanna wants to join in when Laura seeks to repeat it. We do briefly glimpse a man in Hanna's life and she appears to have just had a baby and this has led at least one critic to see her odd behaviour as being due to postnatal depression. But this is never clarified just as the closeness that develops between Laura and Hanna could be explained by the former finding a mother substitute in her new friend but is also presented with a sense of physical attraction that could be indicative of lesbianism.
The vagueness in this major section of the film became for me a serious disruption to what was so compellingly realistic whenever the focus was on the siblings as a trio. But audiences who like to have something to puzzle over and to interpret for themselves may feel differently and they are also catered for by an abrupt ending which leaves the viewer to speculate on what happens next. Yet, while I found these issues serious weaknesses, nothing can prevent one from admiring intensely the scenes centred on the underlying satisfaction that these children have found in their shared self-reliance and recognise it as something that they will doubtless never know again.
Original title: Paradiset brinner.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Bianca Delbravo, Dilvin Asaad, Safira Mossberg, Ida Engvoll, Mitja Siren, Marta Oldenburg, Ellie Ghanati, Andrea Edwards, Sanaz Sahidi, Isabella Kjellberg, Alexander Öhrstrand.
Dir Mika Gustafson, Pro Nima Yousefi, Screenplay Mika Gustafson and Alexander Öhrstrand, Ph Sine Vadstrup Brooker, Pro Des Catharina Nyqvist Ehrnrooth, Ed Anders Skov, Music Giorgio Giampả, Costumes Susse Roos.
Hobab/Intra Movies/Toolbox/Tuffi Films/Film i Väst-Conic.
109 mins. Sweden/Italy/Denmark/Finland. 2023. UK Rel: 30 August 2024. Cert. 15.
