Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival January 26,2019
A film by Alice Waddington
Plot (Spoiler Alert)
Refusing to marry someone she does not love, Uma is sent to Paradise to change her ways. Uma meets other women, Amarna, Chloe and Yu, who don’t want to change either. Paradise looks like a nice place to be in, but it’s a prison. Uma and the others come up with a plan to escape.
Blaine: During her teen years, Alice Waddington loved fantasy stories and she would get lost into each one of them. Alice always imagined a fantasy world that she could be in with her friends. She wanted to live life like her favorite movies, “Never Ending Story” and “The Lord of the Rings”. Both Alice and her parents were big on movies and they would watch them together all the time. Alice also did a lot of creative stuff with her time growing up and she found a passion in each one of them. Alice did photography and she worked for a magazine company at the age of eighteen. Alice also helped design costumes and she loved that. Alice then made a short film about fashion. Alice made “Paradise Hills” because she knew her fourteen year old self would die to see it. When “Paradise Hills” started pre-production, Alice wanted to focus on the costumes first sense fashion was one of her passions. Alice spent a lot of time with the costume designer and she said they put a lot of love into these costumes. The costumes were inspired by movies like “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and “The Princess Bride”. Alice understands fashion and I think it's her favorite subject in making a film.
Alice was very prepared in knowing what she wanted “Paradise Hills” to look like. The world of “Paradise Hills” had to look historical mixed with sci-fi. Watching “Paradise Hills” is like being in an art museum. I love the choices of color Alice used for “Paradise Hills”. Alice Waddington was lucky to have gotten the perfect cast of female actors. Alice got to work with actresses who have been in the business longer than she has and she was impressed they would say yes in being apart of low budget, independent movie. But there’’s more to doing a movie than just money. Actors like to be apart of something unique. Alice gave her actors all the details on who their characters are. Emma Roberts was the first one who came on board and Alice appreciated Emma for being involved with this passion project of her’s. Uma doesn’t know how everything works at Paradise, but she can sense there is something off about the place. There is one thing Uma is blinded by and that’s love. Uma’s not completely miserable at Paradise as long as she has friends who feel the same way about the place.
Milla Jovovich has done great things in her career. Milla loves that she has been given roles where the female character is a great leader or capable of handling herself without a man’s help. What Milla hasn’t done before is work with a female director and she said an opportunity like that doesn’t come around often. But today there’s a lot of females who are showing they have a passion for directing and showing off their creative work to the world. Milla said yes to “Paradise Hills” immediately when she learned a female was going to direct it.
The characters Milla has played in the past, like Alice in the “Resident Evil” movies, have always fought for freedom. Milla’s character in “Paradise Hills” is the opposite. Milla plays the person in charge of Paradise, The Duchess, and she’s like a therapist at times because she wants to get to know Uma and is trying to convince her to become someone she is not. Other times, the Duchess looks like she is the one who needs the therapy because she gets stressed out. But she manages to hold it together.
Eiza Gonzalez had a ton of reasons to say yes to “Paradise Hills”. The number one reason was to work with a female director. Eiza wants the film business to involve more women who are creative. Eiza could see Alice Waddington was a woman with talent after reading the script for “Paradise Hills”. Eiza heard the message of “Paradise Hills” as she was reading through the script and that is it’s ok to be yourself. Eiza was looking forward to seeing how Alice was going to bring the world of “Paradise Hills” to life. Eiza loved being on the sets because they were so nice to look at. The project kept getting better for Eiza because it was going to have a female cast. Another thing Eiza loved about the story to “Paradise Hills” was the relationship between the characters Uma and Amarna.
Amarna has been on Paradise for a while and she knows the place well enough to keep secrets from it, like a hiding place where she can be left in peace. The reason Amarna is on Paradise is because she prefers the nature of women and Paradise is trying to change her ways on that. But Amarna knows the type of person she is. They could lock up forever and she still wouldn’t change.
Amarna develops strong feelings for Uma, but something gets in between them. Uma didn’t want to get married because she was in love with someone else and her lover just so happens to be on Paradise. It’s suspicious that Uma’s lover is on that island. He is Uma’s weakness. But their feelings for each other aren’t as strong as how Amarna feels about Uma. What Amarna and Uma have in common is love is their weakness. That and also they hate being at Paradise. Amarna has a plan to escape Paradise and she wants Uma to keep it between them, but Uma breaks her promise and tells her lover because she can’t keep secrets from him. Thing is he can’t be trusted. It gets out and Amarna is never seen again. Before that, Amarna knew a place where the girls could be free and she gave Uma a map so they could find each other again. It’s hard to tell if Uma has any romantic feelings for Amarna, but Uma does think a lot of Amarna and she’s her best friend.
Amarna is a singer and Eiza Gonzalez herself started off being a pop singer before deciding to switch careers and becoming an actress. Amarna sings one of her songs at dinner and the target is Uma. Amarna sings the song from her heart. It’s her way of expressing her feelings. Most people don’t understand the message being given to them by someone who wants them to know how special they are to them, but Uma gets it. The song is called “Everything I Need” and it was written for “Paradise Hills”. It’s only a minute long, but it’s catchy. Alice Waddington was involved in writing the lyrics for it. Lucas Vidal’s music score has a nice mystical mixed with pop quality to it.
Awkwafina was only known as a music rapper before she became the actress known for being in movies like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Farewell”. Alice Waddington wasn’t familiar with her work, but she took a huge liking to Awkwafina when they met each other. Awkwafina knows how to make people laugh and she made Alice laugh a lot. They became close after that. Yu is very serious because she’s been let down. Yu's family sent her to Paradise because they couldn’t accept her for who she is. Yu loses a lot of feeling because her family rejected her. Yu’s passion is creating music, but it’s not the type of music the family accepts. Awkwafina is in the music business too, so it became clear to Alice that Awkwafina should play Yu. Yu is the opposite of what Awkwafina is. Awkwafina is so expressive, chatty and funny, where as Yu is empty and hardly talks. Alice believed Awkwafina could play the part.
A lot of the cinematography shots in “Paradise Hills” focus on mirror reflection. When Milla Jovovich first appears in the film, the shot focusses on her back side, then it focusses in on the mirror beside her and you see her face for the first time. Another example is a scene where Milla Jovovich’s character is having one of her therapy sessions with Emma Roberts. The shot focusses on Milla and there’s a small mirror beside her with Emma’s reflection. You could say both Milla and Emma are in that shot. The opening to “Paradise Hills” is well shot, showing different angles. It starts off with a low angle shot of a chandelier, although that chandelier looks like it could be a digital effect, but still it looks cool. Emma Robert’s character, Uma, is having her wedding and she sings “Everything I Need” because that was her’s and Amarna’s song. Uma has this really long head cover and men are holding it while going around in circles with her. It’s like being under a tent. I love the overhead shot of that scene.
Uma, Chloe and Yu learn that Paradise was never planning to cure them, but to have them replaced by people who were hired to go through plastic surgery in order to look like them. These women have miserable lives and they’ll do whatever even if they have to pretend to be someone else. The reason the women are not killed as soon as they arrive at Paradise is because they need to be studied first, so the imposters can learn their personalities. All the doubles care about is making things better for themselves. However, Uma’s copy, Anna, has something the others don’t have. Anna has a conscience. Uma explains to them that her’s and the others lives aren’t so perfect either if they can’t be accepted in being who they are. Anna’s reason for taking the job was so that her younger brothers could survive in life. Anna tried to be their guardian, but her best wasn’t enough, so Paradise promised they would be alright if Anna would live life as Uma.
A lot of the escape movies always end with one survivor. Chloe and Yu don’t make it at the end. However, Uma does make a new friend out of Anna as she tries to escape. Both Uma and Anna are able to help each other out. Anna will be able to do her job at pretending to be Uma and the best part is she doesn’t have to get married because the plan is to kill the husband. It’s nice that things work out between those two. Usually a person’s copy would try to get rid of them and take their place.
Uma won’t let men get in the way of anything anymore. Women were more reliable to Uma and they were a team. Uma uses the map to find the place she can call home. Amarna will always be with Uma. The message of “Paradise Hills” is never give up and stay positive about who you are. “Paradise Hills” is also a piece of art.
My rating on “Paradise Hills” is five out of five stars.
