Paradise (2023)
Sometimes a film's premise does all the heavy lifting and the film itself does almost none. That's the frustrating situation with Prasanna Vithanage's Paradise, a Sri Lankan drama that arrives with what sounds like a genuinely compelling idea and then spends its entire runtime dismantling any goodwill that idea generates.
The setup is this: an Indian couple travels to the lush hill country of Sri Lanka to mark their fifth wedding anniversary. Then something unexpected happens, the veneer cracks, and suddenly the deep fractures in their marriage are impossible to ignore. Crucially, all of this plays out against the backdrop of the very real 2022 Sri Lankan economic crisis and the civil unrest that came with it. On paper, that's a bold and fascinating collision. The chaos outside the relationship as a mirror for the chaos within it. I wanted this to work. I really did.
And look, credit where it's due: the film looks stunning. The hill country landscapes are captured with a gorgeous, painterly eye, and if you know nothing else about Sri Lanka, you'll finish this film wanting to book a flight. The visual side of things is the one department where Paradise genuinely delivers, and it's not a small thing. Setting matters, and Vithanage clearly loves this island.
But then the script opens its mouth, and the whole thing falls apart. The dialogue is clunky in a way that's almost impressive, with exchanges that feel written rather than spoken, and conflicts that arrive on cue rather than out of any real dramatic necessity. When you're threading a marital breakdown through a genuine geopolitical emergency, the emotional stakes have to feel enormous. They don't. What actually happens is worse than the drama simply failing to land: the 2022 riots end up feeling like a convenient plot mechanism, a way to force the couple into corners rather than a real reckoning with a real moment of national suffering. That's a hard thing to forgive. Using a crisis that genuinely devastated people's lives as little more than a narrative nudge is uncomfortable at best and cynical at worst.
The performances don't rescue things either. The two leads are saddled with characters who are so poorly drawn and so consistently difficult to like that staying invested becomes a proper effort. I'm not saying protagonists need to be likeable, some of my favourite films are built around deeply flawed people. But those films give you a reason to stay in the room with them. Here, I found myself watching the clock rather than the couple.
It reminded me, in a roundabout way, of the experience I had with Memoria, another film that leans heavily on atmosphere and setting in ways that don't entirely compensate for a narrative that asks a lot of your patience. Though at least that film has a genuine strangeness to it that keeps you at arm's length by design. Paradise wants you emotionally invested and then gives you very little to invest in.
What stings most is that Vithanage is clearly reaching for something real here. The idea that external collapse and internal collapse rhyme with each other, that a country tearing itself apart might expose the smaller, quieter ways a relationship has done the same, is genuinely interesting territory. There's a film in that idea. This just isn't quite it. The ambition is visible throughout, and that makes the failure more frustrating than if the whole thing had been cynically assembled from the start.
One and a half stars. Paradise is a Netflix misfire that squanders a striking premise, a beautiful location, and an admirable thematic intention on a script that simply isn't up to the job. Gorgeous to look at, genuinely difficult to care about.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-06-21
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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