raymondflammer Review of All That Matters Is Past

All That Matters Is Past (2012)

Romantical rewriting of the myth of Eden Paradise

[7/10 · 2 May 2021]

No doubt that this movie would divide opinions, considering the tangled relationship between the three protagonists, the girl and the two brothers. The story takes place mostly in the forest, while the 2 lovers live the sweetest romance on the bank of a lake. But this very romance is just an interlude of innocence between a dramatic past, when the couple had lost a child in an accident, and a tragic future, concluded with a murderer. Lots of references to the Biblical myths are brought up, sometimes blurring the scent of the drama: Adam and Eve in the Eden, of course, Cain and Abel, the lost of Ignorance (Innocence being the original title of the movie), Moses on the river, the wrath of God, the lamb of God etc. At the end, the very quesion asked by the police officer is : is she a victim, or a murderer? Which is uncompatible with the status of innocence which every human being has as a child. Innocence is the metaphysical status of the being, the existence being a leap into a world that no one choose. How could love be tainted with guilt? This is the question that the movie tries to respond to, at the bend of a serial of raw images of the childhood, the feeling of guilt, the will to die or to be washed over from one's sins. A complex portrait of the psychology of human.