Paradise Hills (2019)

Paradise Hills arrives from Spain by way of Sundance, a debut feature from Alice Waddington that dresses its grievances in pastel gowns and calls it a fantasy. Emma Roberts plays Uma, a wealthy young woman deposited on an island where disobedient daughters are remade into compliant wives. The facility is gorgeous, the patients are gorgeous, and the milk is drugged. Milla Jovovich presides as the Duchess with the serenity of a woman who has already won. Eiza González, Awkwafina, and Danielle Macdonald round out a rooming house of malcontents, and Arnaud Valois lurks as the suitor who should have been refused.

The film's anger is genuine and directed with precision at the men who commission the reformation and the mothers who sign the paperwork. Uma's arc ends with a scalpel in a husband's chest, which is a bolder resolution than most studio fantasy permits. The screenplay also finds a class allegory: the poor are sliced, sanded, and trained to impersonate the rich, then discarded when the thorns close. It is a nasty idea, delivered with style. Amarna and Uma exchange a kiss at parting, brief and largely undeveloped, a gesture that registers and then evaporates. The diverse ensemble is a genuine pleasure, though the film is content to let them occupy the frame without interrogating what brought them together.

Where the film stumbles is in the delivery. Its themes are folded into the fable, which means the audience is invited to draw conclusions instead of being handed a pamphlet. That is to the film's credit. The reformation regime imposes a rigid standard of beauty and comportment, and the film notices this without ever mounting a body-acceptance argument. The ending is contrived, the dialogue is awkward, and the rosebush is a decision somebody made. Still, the effort is legible. It is a messy film with a clear point of view, which is more than most releases manage.