Everything is going the right way for entry-level pimp Hotte. With Jenny, it seems to him that he found just the right girl to make money with, to get rid of that scabby old BMW and to make sure "things never get boring". But in redlight business, you never know the end of the road before walking it down to the end...
While overly romanticising at times, Hotte I'm Paradies still gives one of the deepest and most authentic insights into what living as a pimp might be like, at least of the few movies known to me. Misel Maticevic plays the protagonist part quite believable, especially the way he treats his ladies seems very convincing. The camera-work may seem amateur like at first, but it all adds up to the authenticity quite much in its Dogma-like appeal, so that in the end you find yourself so much closer to the characters than any cool, polished footage could have got you. But not all is as dirty and realistic as the camerastyle, the costumes and the Berlin dialect suggest - as I said, the movie ends up romanticising the whole business quite a bit. Hotte stays a bit of a very-golden-hearted gangster figure at times, which for me puts the few examples of brutal violence we see in the movie a little too far into the "exception from the rule" category than it is believable.
But that's only a minor weakness of a great movie, 8 out of 10 from my side!
While overly romanticising at times, Hotte I'm Paradies still gives one of the deepest and most authentic insights into what living as a pimp might be like, at least of the few movies known to me. Misel Maticevic plays the protagonist part quite believable, especially the way he treats his ladies seems very convincing. The camera-work may seem amateur like at first, but it all adds up to the authenticity quite much in its Dogma-like appeal, so that in the end you find yourself so much closer to the characters than any cool, polished footage could have got you. But not all is as dirty and realistic as the camerastyle, the costumes and the Berlin dialect suggest - as I said, the movie ends up romanticising the whole business quite a bit. Hotte stays a bit of a very-golden-hearted gangster figure at times, which for me puts the few examples of brutal violence we see in the movie a little too far into the "exception from the rule" category than it is believable.
But that's only a minor weakness of a great movie, 8 out of 10 from my side!