Paradise Is Burning review – teens survive on wits in dreamy coming-of-age drama

Paradise Is Burning review – teens survive on wits in dreamy coming-of-age drama

Mika Gustafson’s feature has some obvious influences in The Virgin Suicides or American Honey but wears them lightly in this fresh and beautifully cut debut

Like an unusually designed coat featuring quirky details and an interesting fabric choice from a young designer’s first collection, Swedish writer-director Mika Gustafson’s feature debut has raw edges and some sloppy stitching in places, but the whole is fresh, directional and beautifully cut. Sure, it’s not hard to spot the influences that consciously or not infuse the work, from Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and The Bling Ring (with their lolling sisters and girl-gang antics respectively), to Andrea Arnold’s studies of lost or neglected adolescents (Fish Tank, American Honey) and the tender social realism of Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows, Shoplifters). In fact, Paradise Is Burning overlaps significantly with the plot of Nobody Knows, both being stories about underage siblings abandoned by their parents and surviving as best they can on no income or adult supervision. Yet in the end, this has its own particular vibe and flavour, a wooziness only partly related to the frequent scenes of characters getting stoned or drunk over the course of many long, sunlit Scandinavian summer evenings.

Gustafson and co-writer Alexander Öhrstrand’s script is light on specifics but it’s pretty easy to work out the basics: the mother (never seen) of the three sisters at the heart of the story has gone missing, and not for the first time. Sixteen-year-old eldest Laura (Bianca Delbravo, in an award-deserving performance) has stepped up to look after the younger two, 12- or 13-year-old Mira and seven-year-old Steffi (Dilvin Asaad and Safira Mossberg, both also exceptional). The dishes pile up unwashed but Laura makes sure Steffi gets cleaned up properly if she wets the bed and gets to school approximately on time. They have a system worked out for shoplifting groceries, and a neighbour (Marta Oldenburg) who helps out when they suddenly need sanitary pads for Mira’s first period.

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