Margarethe Tiesel in PARADISE: LOVE (Strand Releasing)

After a successful career making documentaries, Austrian director Ulrich Seidl interwove six stories set over a weekend in suburban Vienna in his first feature, Dog Days (2001), which controversially depicted unsimulated sex. He followed up with Import/Export (2007), about the fate of two young people migrating in opposite directions in the pursuit wealth and happiness, but encountering the darker sides of sexuality and death.

Paradise: Love, which competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, is the first of the “Paradise Trilogy,” originally conceived as a single film. Each film in the series follows a different generation of the same female family on a quest for fulfillment on separate summer vacations.

In Paradise: Love, Margarethe Tiesel stars as Teresa, an overweight, middle-aged, single mother on her first trip to a Kenyan beach resort. Initiated into the local culture by her experienced female companion, the main attraction is the sexual prowess of the local men, who loiter beyond the resort’s strictly patrolled beach. Naive and body-conscious, Teresa enters into sexual encounters looking for love but is exploited by the Kenyan’s well-rehearsed cons, thus emotionally blackmailed to bankroll sick relatives in dire need. While her friend gallivants with her regular retained lover, Teresa is bruised but undeterred. Alert to the trade, she hardens and embraces her economic empowerment. Liberated as a “sugar mama,” she becomes more demanding with each new lover. In an excruciating scene of self-denial, Teresa tries to teach a lover the sincere, sensual touch that money can’t buy.

It’s filmed in Seidl’s signature austerw style, with solely diegetic sound and no musical soundtrack. His documentary approach, shot chronologically on location, underscores the disturbing authenticity of the action and Kenya’s colonial history. The script co-written by regular collaborator (and Seidl’s wife) Veronika Franz originally featured no dialogue and was constantly reworked during filming to capture and react to real events and relationship dynamics.

The exceptional casting by Eva Roth mixes professional, non-professional, and locals. Margarethe Tiesel is extraordinary in an incredibly exposing and brave performance. The disturbing change in her character is painful to watch, her loneliness underscored with her inability to get in touch with her only daughter back in Austria. Inge Maux as her experienced friend and Peter Kazungu as Munga are equally outstanding. Kazungu, one of the “beach boys” cast from locals found on the Kenyan beaches, rescues Teresa from unwanted attention before seducing her.

Beautiful saturated cinematography by Ed Lachman and Wolfgang Thaler, combined with Andreas Donhauser and Renate Martin’s production design, show off Seidl’s background in art history, which he studied prior to film school. Stunning nude tableau scenes, reminiscent of the monumental paintings of Ruben and contemporary British artist Jenny Saville, challenge the viewer to confront contemporary attitudes to the body and the aging process, while graphic lingering shots of the sexual exchanges raise uncomfortable questions about sexual commodification and racial stereotyping.

Paradise: Love constantly shifts our sympathies between the self-conscious, aging, and lonely women, who have spent their lives caring for others, and the impoverished Kenyans’ need to feed their families. Chasing down an errant lover, Teresa confronts his “sick sister,” cradling his child who scorns Teresa for her naivety. After holiday friends deliver a young Kenyan to Teresa’s room to dance for her birthday, the sexual scene that plays out between all the actresses is truly disturbing, turning from hilarity to pity and degradation. The film becomes excruciating as unrelenting scenes mount, with Seidl pondering “Who’s exploiting who?” Direct visual metaphors underscore his game: the regimented line of apathetic tourists lazing on sun loungers or the tourists entertained by ravenous crocodiles devouring their catch at feeding time.

Immersive and provocative, it’s by turns blackly comic, deeply tragic, and truly shocking. Audaciously told with an objective detachment and an unapologetic refusal to moralize, it provides no easy answers and resonates long after viewing. Its sequel, Paradise: Faith, won the Special Jury Prize at the 2012 Venice International Film Festival, while the final part of the trilogy, Paradise: Hope, premiered in competition at Berlin in February. Neither has a U.S. release date as yet but keep your eyes peeled. They are not to be missed.