Although gritty dramas about the hell of drug addiction are seldom in short supply in the low-budget independent sphere, it’s hard to imagine even the most uncompromising U.S. film committing quite…
’s best actor award two years ago for “Shuttle Life”) are there at the behest of concerned parents. Others, like the mentally handicapped bully-magnet Zhu Sun don’t appear to have anywhere else to go. And still others, like the former champion kickboxer nicknamed “Rat” are serving court-ordered rehab time.
The program, which is always struggling for funding, sets the recovering addicts to work around the farm, tilling the soil, selling the produce at market and even learning a trade in the on-site bakery. And it has a spiritual aspect, too: Just as God is central to the 12-step program, Hua ge often leads his charges in recitations from Mahayana Buddhist text the Heart Sutra.
The darkness of the film’s themes is reflected in Meteor Cheong’s somber-paletted photography, much of which takes place at night or in the failing light of evening, when, as an unforced metaphor for transformation, the casually artful handheld camera picks out butterflies and moths, some living, others dead and dusty.
Whether all this restraint is enough to earn the film’s most melodramatic and dubiously miserabilist turns of the screw is debatable. But Liao’s filmmaking confidence is undeniable, and though “The Paradise” offers no answers, the questions it poses about the whole way we approach treatment and recovery are potent and valuable.
: Director: Shih Han Liao. Screenplay: Siew Hong Chris Leong, Ting Ning Chen. Camera : Meteor Cheong. Editors: Ching-Song Liao, Chen-Ching Li, Hsiao Yun Ku. Music: Point Hsu.
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