Divine Love (18) |Home Ents Review
Dir. Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil, 2019, 100 mins, in Portuguese with subtitles
Cast: Dira Paes, Julio Machado, Emilio de Mello
Review by Colin Dibben
Joana (Paes) is a deeply religious civil servant working in the divorce section of a registry office. Joana and her husband Danila (Machado) are members of an evangelical Christian cult called Divine Love, which has at least one unusual, highly sexualised ritual.
Joana spends her work hours proselytising for Divine Love, extolling the virtues of marriage, children and family life to the divorcees who end up at her desk. But she is not herself able to conceive, which brings extra intensity to her spiritual life in the cult.
She prays for a miracle but then finds herself at odds with Danila and the cult when her prayer is answered.
It’s great to see a film that is utterly visually absorbing – and looking great in 4K. Mascaro says in the interview extra that he wanted to use light to give power to a sense of the spiritual; and the hazy, neon-tinged night time shots do that wonderfully.
He is also serious about exploring Joana’s personal faith and its excessive nature, even if the film is also a satire on the rituals of outer-edge evangelical Christianity, with its drive-in churches and raves.
Joana’s story is set in 2027. The Brazilian state deploys genetic technologies to help promote a right-wing, family-centred ideology on the population. For example, when you enter a public building your identity, marital and parental status flash up on an e-board for all to see. There is something so prosaic and contemporary about the way Marasco creates Joana’s world that it takes some time to register his attitude to that world.
This is a beautiful, thought-provoking and unique, 21st century take on the nativity story – one that highlights the political dimensions of the anomalous.
