Almost immediately after I saw Paradise: Love at the Chicago International Film Festival last year I knew it would land towards the top of my favorite films of the year. Paradise: Love is an exploitation film where neither paradise nor love is actually found, only sought after. At that time it was my first Ulrich Seidl film and I had no idea that it was just the first part of the Paradise trilogy. Needless to say, I was impatiently waiting for the next two films as soon as soon as I found out about the series.

Paradise: Faith, the second installment of the Paradise trilogy, starts off with Anna Maria (Maria Hofstätter) entering a room to pray in front of the cross on the wall for Jesus to forgive her for being unchaste. She proclaims that so many people are obsessed with sex. This is interesting and important because Anna is sisters with Teresa, the love-seeking escapist who essentially turns into an obsessive sex tourist in Paradise: Love.

Instead of traveling to a foreign country while on vacation, as her sister did, Anna stays close to home for her to practice her own missionary style of work by spreading the word of Catholicism to others. As you might expect, going door-to-door asking people to let her in with a small statue of the Virgin Mary in her arms, yields mixed results. But she does not let the unsuccessful attempts bring her down because Anna is completely devoted to help make Austria Catholic again.

The film takes a drastic turn when her husband Nabil (Nabil Saleh) shows up unannounced at her home after a two-year hiatus. Crippled from an accident that led Anna to start believing again, Nabil returns to a much different wife who dedicates most of her time to her religious practices rather than taking care of him. Her controlling beliefs upset him to the point where he begins to tear down the plethora of Jesus photos that hang in just about every room of the house. Anna considers this whole situation to be a test of faith from Jesus, but finds it increasingly difficult to forgive those around her as she often preaches onto others.

Trademarks of Seidl’s documentary style of observing dark humanistic subjects are found in Paradise: Faith, just as one would come to expect from the director. And one of my favorite qualities about the director is his minimalistic and straight-forward approach he takes with his films. The camera remains mostly free of movement and often the focal point is in the dead center of the frame. There is no music to be heard, except when the characters themselves sing, and the dialog does not contain much structure. All of these techniques help the audience to remain distraction free, focusing on exactly what Seidl wants you to – a twisted thing to do because his films are often not easy to watch.

Even though Paradise: Faith contains an underlying bit of pitch-black humor, it is every bit as disturbing and thought-provoking as Seidl’s previous work. Here faith is explored in an overbearing and full of irony fashion – prominently put on display when the religious fundamentalist masturbates with a crucifix.

One letdown of Paradise: Faith is that the main character has no sympathetic qualities for the viewer to care about, which means the unapologetic story must carry the entire film. And for the most part it does. That is until the end where it begins to run out of steam and scenes go on a bit longer than they need to. The film is more comical than the first installment, but not as remarkable.

Paradise: Faith trailer

If there is one thing Ulrich Seidl is the master of, it is getting a reaction out of his audience. Whether or not it is a positive one is another story. This is especially in film Dog Days as there are an inordinate amount of reviews detailing people walking out on the film in the theaters. It is not very hard to see why; the film shows its cruel nature from the very beginning, and does not loosen its grip by the time the credits start to roll. It cannot be overstated enough that the film is not for everyone.

As suggested by its title, Dog Days is set during the hottest days of the summer in a suburb of Vienna. In this suburban development, the unoriginal mass-produced houses share the same misery as the owners that occupy them. Through the lives of several different characters, the film exhibits the loneliness of these middle-class Austrian citizens, often in a deranged sexual manner.

Characters range from a stripper who gets abused by her over-protective boyfriend that hits her as much as any guy who looks at her, to an autistic hitchhiker who constantly recites useless Top 10 facts while making perverse sexual conversation with the passengers. Other characters include; a skeptical alarm salesman, an elderly man who longings for his housekeeper, a middle-aged teacher who seemingly welcomes sexual depraved men to have their way with her, and a divorced couple that somehow thinks living together is a good idea.

These are not all the characters contained in the film, but the point is that none of them are at all flattering. Dog Days never asks for a single ounce of sympathy from any of the characters, mostly because none of them have any redeeming qualities. There is nothing wrong with filling up the screen with a bunch of flawed characters, but the real issue here is in the lack of direction. Unlike Seidl’s more recent work in Paradise: Love, Dog Days is much less refined. Therefore, the clarity of the film’s intent becomes much less apparent.

Early in Ulrich Seidl’s career, he made a name for himself from the documentaries he made. Here in his first narrative feature, he utilizes some of the same characteristics that a documentary has in order to achieve the same feel of authenticity. A good example of this is how the film mostly observes its characters, rather than the perception of them being controlled by a script.

Just like hottest days of summer can be uncomfortable to bear, Dog Days is equally uncomfortable to watch. Instead of containing a realized plot, the film is more of a character study on the people of a grotesque suburban community. Back in 2001, the film won the Grand Special Jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and ever since then people have been debating whether the film actually accomplishes anything significant. So it appears as though questioning its effectiveness is unavoidable, but at the same time, so are having reactions to the film. Sometimes any reaction at all can be considered a success, but it is hard to say this film succeeded on any other level.