A few months ago, American audiences had the chance to see “Paradise: Love,” in which Ulrich Seidl warned overweight middle-aged women not to indulge in the wrong kind of sex. Now, here’s the trilogy’s second installment, in which the jolly Austrian makes it clear that women of a certain age do not have his permission to overdo it with religion, either.
“Paradise: Faith” does offer hitherto unglimpsed evidence of a sense of humor, with one funny scene of Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter, glimpsed briefly in the earlier movie) attempting to get a disheveled drunk to pray with her. Otherwise it is a predictable story of a woman who’s sexualized her devotion to Christ, refuses to sleep with her disabled Muslim husband (Nabil Saleh, a non-professional and touching at times) and tries to convert people who aren’t interested.
Considering the revulsion with which Margarethe Tiesel was treated for sleeping with young Africans in “Love,” it’s a bit much to see a nighttime scene in which Anna Maria encounters an open-air park orgy and scurries home to do penance. Her dismay is filmed as both prurient and foolish, but that’s what happens when you’re in a Seidl movie.