Parents' Guide to This Is Paris

THIS IS PARIS presents the famously party-going great granddaughter of the Hilton Hotel chain founder as strangely unhappy. A staple of gossip columns and the victim of a sex tap release when she was underage, Hilton has also been a punchline in the media (even with respect to her reality show The Simple Life). Here she makes clear that she's a carefully self constructed "brand" and successful international businesswoman. The celebrity DJ, social media pioneer, and fragrance purveyor is also, according to her sister Nicky, "addicted to drama." The documentary reveals that Hilton was abused at a psychiatric boarding school. Her parents sent her there to deal with the partying and, unmentioned in the film, DUIs and other difficult behavior. One family friend suggests other issues underneath, noting that during Hilton's childhood there was "too much focus on how beautiful she was," and home movie footage shows Hilton wearing makeup as a child, looking eerily like Jon-Benet Ramsey. The parents had her brutally kidnapped and dragged to Provo Canyon School in Utah, with a drastic program that allegedly medicated and abused her. The film follows Hilton on promotional tours in Asia and a DJ gig in Antwerp, but the big revelation is saved for later when she meets with former Provo classmates to discuss lasting effects of their trauma -- trust issues, an inability to conduct lasting love relationships, PTSD, and other serious woes. Hilton notes that her teenaged goal was to make a million dollars, an achievement she believed would bring happiness but didn't. Now her goal is to make a billion dollars. Her sister observes that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome "is the definition of insanity."