Mika Gustafson’s fine debut drama, a prize-winner at last year’s Venice International Film Festival, reads, on paper, like an exercise in familiar social realism. In the same school as Andrea Arnold, perhaps? Or the early work of her fellow Swede Lukas Moodysson? Three children, abandoned by their mother, live alone in social housing. Hounded by the authorities, the eldest devises plans to conceal evidence of their parentless state. So far, so kitchen sink.
What sets Paradise Is Burning apart is the unique quasi-rural ambience and a set of performances that speak of great investment by film-makers and cast.
Laura (Bianca Delbravo), Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and Steffi (Safira Mossberg) bustle about in a state of generally amicable chaos. Laura, the eldest, does her best to hold the family together but is occasionally distracted by a strange compulsion to break into neighbouring houses and rifle harmlessly through the owners’ possessions.
It seems as if those around know the girls’ situation. We get the sense that this is still some sort of functioning family. They attend school and keep themselves looking presentable. The screenplay, by the director and Alexander Öhstrand, sets up occasional threats. There is a fair bit of low-level violence in the neighbouring fields. We know that they may be making an enemy of their futures. But we also come to understand that they are better off than many with two parents in the house.
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Bianca Delbravo (what a name for an actor) is a revelation as locum mother. There is a whiff throughout of someone teetering on the brink of an undecided adulthood – juggling responsible domestics with the still-nagging desires of the teenager. We rarely hear her give in to any desire for properly grown-up assistance, but her fastening on to Hanna (Ida Engvoll), a helpful neighbour, suggests she may not be so independent as she claims. Might Hanna pretend to be her mother for the social workers?
Though immaculately made in every respect, Paradise Is Burning never quite finds its narrative rhythms. The story is happily fussing over here and then gets distracted by something over there. But Sine Vadstrup Brooker’s lovely cinematography, drifting in the liminal spaces between city and country, keeps the viewer uneasily gripped throughout. Promising work from all involved.
Paradise Is Burning is in cinemas from Friday, August 30th
