Paradise (2023)

Paradise (2023)

Full Recap Of 'Paradise (2023)'

In the near future, there’s a biotech company in Germany called Aeon, which offers a medical procedure that can take away time from one’s life and transfer it to another person’s body, as long as they’re a compatible match. Thanks to this technology, people in dire need of money can sell as many years of their lives as they want, which makes their bodies age quickly. In contrast, the person who buys the time gets their youthful looks restored, which means rich people are pretty much immortal. Usually, only poor people who are desperate to improve their living conditions agree to sell their time, although Aeon always promotes it as a “choice” and a “donation.”

In the future, there will be a high number of migrants and asylum seekers, and this is the only way they have to earn a living. The company makes sure to honor scholars, artists, and celebrities with time, and Nobel winners have recently been added to the list. Aeon’s best donation manager is Max, who goes around convincing people to sell their age. Today, he’s talking to the son of a migrant family, telling the teenager that he would greatly benefit from selling fifteen years of his life. To convince him, Max explains how he sold five years of his life in order to afford a college education.

He also points out that the chances of his family finally getting the legal paperwork to live in peace are almost zero, but this money could help them open a business. All this manipulation gets Max the deal. When he returns to the company building, Max puts on a raincoat to deal with the protesters outside, who throw things at any worker who passes by. Many people are against Aeon’s technology because it is increasing social and economic disparity in society. Once inside, Max attends a special ceremony during which he receives an award for being the best agent of the year.

Then, the company’s founder, Sophie Theissen, gave a speech about the importance of their work. Meanwhile, in one of Aeon’s clinics, patients are having a calm day when suddenly, a man dressed as an employee pulls out a gun and shoots a bunch of people in the room before graffitiing the wall with an A symbol and then running off. He’s from the Adam Group, which is meant to be an anti-Aeon organization. They use terrorist activities to stop the company and kill people in the name of saving society. Later, Sophie, together with her guards Kaya and Nowak, are watching a video sent by Adam’s leader, Lilith, who promises more chaos is coming.

Max returns home and prepares a special dinner to celebrate his award with his wife, Elena. They haven’t finished paying for the apartment yet, but their dream is to have kids, so before eating, they end up getting frisky for a while. The next day, the couple goes to visit Elena’s parents. Her dad jokes about maybe buying some extra years for himself, but he’s very clearly being passive-aggressive and showing disdain for Max’s job, which he considers unethical. Elena interrupts before an argument escalates, but during the ride home, Max wishes she would defend him instead of being annoyingly neutral.

When the couple makes it back to their building, they’re shocked to discover that their apartment is on fire. Not only did they lose all their belongings, but they lost all their money too because it was at home. When they go to see the insurance company, they discover they won’t cover this incident because reports indicate a candle started the fire, which is seen as negligence. Elena swears she always puts out all the candles before leaving the place, but that’s the official report, and they can do nothing about it. To make matters worse, Max learns that to get the loan from the bank, Elena offered forty years of her life as collateral, which she never told him.

Max tries to offer his own years instead, but he’s turned down because there aren’t compatible recipients for him. This confuses Max because he donated in the past, but apparently, the recipient recently died. When they leave the insurance company, the cops arrest Elena to prevent her from fleeing the country. Max swears he’ll get the money to pay the bank in some other way and goes to see Sophie to explain his situation, getting Sophie to promise she’ll see what she can do. Afterward, Sophie has a meeting with the company’s shareholders, who are tired of wasting resources on checking for compatible DNA because it means some people may never get the chance to buy some extra years, and genetic dispositions are very rare anyway.

They call Sophie “too biased.” A few days later, Max’s lawyer informs him there has been no news from Sophie and that she’s ignoring their calls. With no other choice, Max goes to the clinic and tries to visit Elena, but they tell him he has to wait until the procedure is over. Losing his mind, Max runs into the other rooms to try to reach his wife, but he’s tackled down by Kaya and her team. Meanwhile, Elena is prepared for the procedure. Hearing a lawyer read the contract makes her finally snap, and she begins struggling against the doctors, but she’s given an injection that puts her to sleep, and then she’s connected to a machine that transfers thirty-eight years to a person in another room whose face is hidden.

Afterward, Max takes Elena home, but she doesn’t say a word. During the following days, Elena’s body starts to age quickly until she looks like an elderly woman, and she can barely stand looking at herself in the mirror. Max and Elena’s relationship becomes very sour and awkward, and although Max tries to comfort and support Elena, she becomes very distant. One morning, Max is called to the company, and he learns that he has been given a promotion that includes a salary rise, but this is useless now. Furious, Max runs to try to talk to Sophie, but Kaya stops him from getting too close.

Sophie ignores him and gets in her car, although Max notices she’s starting to look younger. Later at home, Max is affectionate to Elena, swearing he still loves her, but Elena thinks it’s pity and tells him to leave her alone. After Max leaves, Elena begins feeling a strange pain in her abdomen and rushes to the bathtub, where she starts bleeding. Meanwhile, Max goes for a walk and to have a beer at the park, where he’s approached by a girl selling illegal uppers. Max quickly tells her off. A few hours later, Elena is in the hospital for her pain. Max is keeping her company and is shocked to learn that before the procedure, Elena had been pregnant, and today’s bleeding had been a miscarriage because this old body can’t have babies.

Tired of this awkward life they’re having, Elena makes Max take her to her parent’s house, where she’ll live from now on. Heartbroken, Max promises to find a way to reverse the procedure, but Elena’s father tells him off, reminding him this is the system he helped to create. Desperate for a solution, Max finds the girl in the park and approaches her to demand information, knowing that the girl got her procedure from somewhere illegal because Aeon would never make kids. The girl gives him a special contact that Max later calls, and he learns of an underground group that has been performing age-transplant surgeries in the neighboring country of Lithuania. 

He’s told to pick up a burner phone and fake passports in a shady neighborhood and that he needs to get hold of the recipient who has been given Elena’s time. Afterward, Max hides in a hotel and makes plans to kidnap Sophie because he’s sure her getting younger and refusing to help him isn’t a coincidence. For the next few days, he follows Sophie around until one afternoon, when he finds his chance when he sees her alone in a cemetery with no guards in sight. After hiding his face, he approaches the now young-looking Sophie, who begins yelling for help and running.

Max catches up quickly and tases her until she falls unconscious. Then, he paints an A on a grave to make it look like the Adam group did this. Afterward, Max goes to pick Elena up at her workplace, asking her to trust him. Together, they go to the abandoned building where he’s keeping an illegal van and Sophie, all tied up, but Elena thinks this is crazy, and an argument ensues. Max convinces her to come along when he mentions this is the only chance to rebuild their lives and have a family. At the cemetery, Kaya and Nowak investigate the situation, and Nowak uses the footage from security cameras to trace the car Max used.

Everything was bought with a fake account, but Nowak follows all the purchases until he traces the first one to Max’s real account, so now they’ll be looking for him. Nowak wonders if they should call the cops, but Kaya refuses. By the time they make it to the abandoned building, the couple is already gone. While Elena and Max make their way to the harbor, Kaya and Nowak prepare a new operation to catch them, this time with the help of the police. Nowak explains how the couple met: Max had been assigned to Elena as her donation manager, but in the course of making the sale, they fell in love and got married.

Nowak admits he feels bad for desperate people, but Kaya calls him out and reveals she’s actually sixty-four years old. She doesn’t like modifying her body like this, but she does it for the job because she owes Sophie a lot. At the harbor, Max and Elena manage to get on a ship without much trouble, but they’re caught on a security camera, and Nowak gets their location. Every few hours, Max checks on Sophie and brings her food and drinks. She’s being kept inside a box with a bathtub, pretending to be cargo. In the evening, the couple watches a happy family and hopes for their own baby in the future.

Suddenly, a child mentions some funny lights at the shore, and Max and Elena come out to discover the police are waiting for them in Lithuania. Thinking fast, Max decides to use the family to their advantage. When the cops begin inspecting all the cars leaving the ship, Max’s van comes out, but it’s the family dad driving it under threat from Max. He pretends to be a delivery worker transporting a bathtub, but the cops get suspicious because he looks very nervous. They ask to see the back of the van, where Sophie and Elena are hiding inside the bathtub. The cops look at the box and demand the man to open it fully, and when the poor guy hesitates, they ask him why he’s so nervous.

Through a Bluetooth earbud connected to his phone, Max tells the guy to say that he’s nervous because he’s never been held at gunpoint before. The leader of the operation notices his officer isn’t handling his weapon well and lets the driver go to avoid being called out for misconduct. Then, the wife arrives in her car with her baby, while Max is hidden in the back with the kid held at gunpoint. The cops see nothing wrong with her and let her pass. Both vehicles stop by the road later, and the family reunites, but before letting them go, Max destroys their phones and shoots one of their car’s tires.

Seeing the baby cry, Elena feels guilty. Then, the couple leaves in the van with Sophie still tied in the bathtub. A few hours later, they stop in the middle of the road so Sophie can empty her pee bucket, but now that she can talk, she explains she isn’t Sophie, she’s her daughter Marie. They just happen to look a lot alike now that her mother has gone through the procedure. Max doesn’t believe her and searches the information on the internet, which says Sophie only had one daughter who died ages ago and whose grave she was visiting in the cemetery. Marie explains that precisely to avoid press attention, she was kept out of the spotlight, but Max doesn’t believe her and takes her back to the tub.

However, Elena is starting to have doubts. Eventually, they find an abandoned hotel and decide to spend the night there. Marie is allowed to be out, and she insists she isn’t Sophie, explaining she actually hates her mother’s work because it’s unethical and that she’s on the couple’s side. Elena begins arguing with Max, who still doesn’t believe her, and he points out that even if the story is true, Marie should still be a match for Elena because she has the same DNA as her mother. Elena is horrified by Max wanting to “use” a child and leaves the room.

Marie asks for a shower, so Max takes her to the bathroom. While Marie explains that Sophie had invented the age-transplant method while trying to cure her sister, Max turns around so she can change, and Marie takes this chance to hit him and run away. Marie immediately runs to the woods, where it's dark and there’s no signal for the phone she stole. She notices a light nearby, meaning she’s being chased, so she hurries up, but when she’s about to cross what she thinks is a big puddle, it turns out to be a deep hole, and she begins sinking.

Marie tries to grab onto a fallen tree and has no choice but to yell for help. Luckily, the light turns out to be Elena, who quickly helps her get out. The women return to the hotel, and Marie can finally have her shower. When she takes off her clothes, Elena notices that she doesn’t have the scars from the procedure, meaning she truly is Marie. Elena tells Max of this, but he explains the skin probably regenerated during the procedure and reminds Elena that he’s doing this so they can have a baby. He tells Elena she deserves better and kisses her, which then escalates into getting frisky while a tied-up Marie can hear them from the tub.

Meanwhile, Nowak tells Kaya that he’s found the location of the couple, and they get ready to go after them. A few hours later, Elena and Max are suddenly woken up by a few men pointing guns at them. It’s the Adam group, who take away Max’s gun before Lilith reveals herself. She confirms the girl is Marie and not Sophie and then takes the trio to an abandoned building where she reveals the whole truth: Sophie had been looking for an aging donor for her personal use, and that person happened to be Elena. The company had sent Max because he was their best donation manager, but instead of making Elena donate, the two fell in love with each other and eventually got married.

When Sophie needed the donation, she burned down their apartment on purpose and had Max’s match killed to prevent him from donating some of his years. When Max accuses Lilith of being a murderer, Lilith gives Elena a gun with only one bullet, telling her to kill Marie or end things for herself. Elena doesn’t dare to do either and drops the gun, causing Lilith to point out everyone is a pacifist when they’re forced to take lives themselves, but they have no problem allowing doctors to do the same on their behalf. At that moment, Max’s burner phone receives the location of the illegal clinic, which will be valid for six hours.

If they don’t want to miss the appointment, the couple will have to help Lilith kill Sophie. When Kaya surrounds the building with her team, Max comes out, pretending Adam isn’t with them. He tells the team that only Sophie is allowed inside, and that if anyone else tries to enter the building, Elena will shoot Marie. A young-looking Sophie shows up and accepts the terms, but before she can enter, Kaya wonders how Max knew Sophie was with them. She realizes this is a trap, and suddenly, Nowak takes out his gun and shoots Sophie, knocking her out. Kaya immediately kills Nowak, and from inside the building, the Adam group opens fire against Sophie’s team.

Max rushes back into the hotel, only to fall when something explodes near him. After dodging a few guards, he’s grabbed by a rebel, but after exchanging a few hits, he manages to knock him out. Then, Max grabs Elena and Marie and drags them to the garage to escape. While Max tries to start the car, Marie reveals she took a gun and tries to shoot Elena, but it has no bullets. Elena is disappointed that Marie would kill her after she refused to shoot her, so she grabs Marie and hits her head against the car until she falls unconscious.

Then, the trio escapes in the car while Kaya checks Nowak’s phone and discovers he’s been in contact with the rebels because he’s been part of the Adam group all along. A few hours later, Max confesses he doesn’t want to do anything to Marie because he doesn’t want to become like Lilith. However, Elena has had enough and kicks Max out of the car by threatening to end things for herself. After Max leaves, Elena drives all the way to the illegal clinic, where Marie is dragged against her will, and the procedure gets done. Meanwhile, Max wanders around, and when he sees a bus full of immigrants, he follows it to join a refugee camp.

The next morning, Marie is found walking down the road by a trucker, who takes her back to the city. Moments later, she’s reunited with Sophie, who is alive and well because she had been wearing a bulletproof vest. Then, Kaya announces she quits because she’s tired of killing people just for business. During the following days, Marie starts to age rapidly, yet a selfish Sophie refuses to donate some of her years to her own daughter, promising to find a donor soon. A few months later, Max finds Elena at the beach. She looks young and pregnant, and she has a new husband to take care of her.

When she sees Max, she doesn’t even try to talk to him, and Max goes back to his new life: being a rebel with the Adam group, determined to bring Sophie down.

Video Recap of 'Paradise (2023)'

CAST OF 'PARADISE (2023)'

Kostja Ullmann as Max

Corinna Kirchhoff as Elena (alt)

Marlene Tanczik as Elena (jung)

Iris Berben as Olivia Theissen

Lisa-Marie Koroll as Marie Theissen

Lorna Ishema as Kaya

Numan Acar as Viktor

Alina Levshin as Sophie Theissen (jung)

Tom Böttcher as Nils

Gizem Emre as Eva (Clinic)

Lisa Loven Kongsli as Lilith

Dalila Abdallah as Lorna

Simon Amberger as Moderator (MC)

Zemyna Asmontaite as Female Therapist 2

Jan Beller as Bornheim (AEON)

Alida Bohnen as Erika (AEON)

Aleyna Cara as Pamina Yildrim

Cynthia Cosima as Strömquist

Other Info

Director: Boris Kunz

Writers: Simon Amberger - Peter Kocyla - Boris Kunz

Movie Genre: Action - Thriller - Sci-Fi

Release Date: 2023

Country of Origin: Germany

Filming Locations: Lithuania, Germany

Production Company: NEUESUPER

Runtime: 1 hour 57 minutes