All That Matters Is Past (2012)

Directed by: Sara Johnsen
Country: Norway

Review: Sara Johnsen’s third feature-film had a promising start, but in fact did not provide us with a great storytelling. It reconstructs the happenings that led to a double killing, involving William and Ruud, two brothers who hated each other since childhood, when they both moved from Sweden to Norway and fell in love with the same girl, Janne. The latter, as only witness, will clarify the story, which was oddly narrated by the policewoman responsible for the investigation. Using frequent flashbacks to their youth, the plot was a prolonged mess of encounters and separations, jealous situations, abandoned babies, illegal immigration, kidnaps, and sexual abuses. The incidents, presented in a confusing order, diverted our attention from the story’s center. Actually, the film drags for long periods, evincing a slowness of processes that never pushed me to care much about its characters. Using a tragic soundtrack along with a sorrowful narration, “All That Matters Is Past” is a bleak tale that often uses unnecessary scenes to impress (like a childbirth or a goat’s slaughter) and almost never shakes the viewer for the right reasons. Merely a promise…