Every day Paul crosses a canal that separates the Amsterdam city center from the north side, where his lover Christiaan lives and waits for him. A dear routine for both - until one day Paul meets Claire, who starts seducing him into her very own universe, the Hotel Paradijs. Claire makes Paul the audience of her own play: a play where the roles are reversed and into which Paul is undeniably drawn.
Each day, Paul makes the same small journey across the canal – leaving Amsterdam’s postcard center behind and heading north, toward the industrial side of the city. That’s where Christiaan lives, and where he waits for Paul like it’s the most normal thing in the world. For the two of them, that crossing is more than commuting: it’s a ritual.
Then Paul meets Claire, and the ritual cracks.
Claire doesn’t simply flirt – she builds a whole stage around him. She invites him into her own orbit, the Hotel Paradijs, a place that feels half real, half performance. Suddenly Paul isn’t just living his life, he’s watching it unfold like a play, with Claire directing the mood and flipping the power dynamics until he can’t tell whether he’s resisting or stepping closer on purpose.
This mid-length narrative film from 2007 is one of those rare stories that treats bisexuality as a full experience, not a plot twist. Paul isn’t “choosing a side” as much as he’s trying to understand what love looks like when it pulls him in two completely different directions – with two people who offer two totally different kinds of gravity.
“Jan Krüger is one of the most interesting directors of German cinema … His stories go about seduction, temptation, and rejection; about life on the edge, drifting and dreaming, all of which ends in more or less rugged landings. Krüger is darkly romantic in his topics, yet a highly disciplined filmmaker … Moviemaking as an acting-out of passions, as the conquest of unknown terrain which one visits with delight, all the more in a movie theatre.”
Rüdiger Suchsland, artechock.de
Official Selection: Frameline31 (2007)
