This work met with utterly divided responses from the critics,most of whom praised it to the skies,and from the audience who was taken aback by a non-conventional movie and turned their back on it ;after all,it came from Alain Cavalier,who till "Therèse",was an "accessible" director .
"Libera Me "(1993)puzzled the audience :no dialog,no music,no settings,hardly a screenplay;"La Rencontre" disconcerted his former fans even more.
"Le Paradis " is ,in an avant-Garde form,what "Thérèse " was ,in a more traditional -although refined- style;it has some moments of brilliance,but also some boring fortune cookie philosophies;some sequences are even irrelevant:the girl who meets her biological dad who gives her a soft toy.Using toys and things instead of human beings ,Cavalier convinces (the bird ,epitomizing the prodigal son ,who in the end cannot escaped from the creator's infinite hand ) or bores (the toy robot fighting in a war -against his demons?) We attend some kind of "Q and A " game in which two persons (we only see one of them) hint at biblical (and Greek) characters and concepts ;two scenes of the Genesis are "played :Adam and Eve and the sacrifice of Abraham.
The movie begins with the death of a baby peacock which is buried:the subject is mortality but ,as we learn in Sunday School,it's the way to luminous immortality (but can't immortality be too long to live?).
Undeniably,the movie exerts a fascination on the viewer who watches it in some kind of trance.But as far as faith is concerned,you will be better off with "Thérèse" ,one of the best "religious" movies ever done. Even more amazing,Cavalier's Pre-Therese movies did not display spiritual concerns ,the firds ones were both even overtly political.
