Divino Amor

What if the official registrar, who has to arrange your divorce, suddenly begs you to give your marriage another chance?

Welcome in the Brazil of 2027, where bikinis are forbidden and detection gates reveal your pregnancy. Where you can go to confession in a drive-through church. Divino Amor is an unhurried, alienating and well-acted film, with subtle humor, strange sets, disco music and a few very explicit scenes. For fans of movies like Drive, Her, Under The Skin and The Lobster.

This movies shows the recent future in Brazil, where the evangelicals will be majority of the population, it will finish the carnival. But when this production derails is shows women using burkines at beach and, later, practicing swing at churches. If this weren't enough, the sex scenes are very long and explicit. Repet, made at churches. Completely nonsense, crazy and unpleasant,

I don't want to write a spoiler review because this film is just too good to give away the essence in a review. It is VERY rare for me to give a film a ten. In the case of Divine Amor I would give a twelve out of ten if I could. It is a truly extraordinary film. Julio Machado and particularly Dira Paes give magnificent performances. The film is a brilliant fusion of science fiction and religion. You don't have to be religious to appreciate it, but if you are religious, and I am, have plenty of tissues ready. The mechanism of the child narrator is a stroke of genius that doesn't become clear until the end. Yes, there is some nudity and sex, but it is necessary to tell the story and you shouldn't shy away from this film because of that. All I can say is, trust me, watch it, this film is a unique experience.

Not properly bad but a little frustrating. I expected a much deeper and encompassing distopy but I saw some nice ideas loosely connected without a clear understanding of what the movie is about. Acting is good (Dira Paes is always awesome), the film is visually nice too, the fururistic Brazil seems credible (with the advance of Neo-Pentecostal fundamentalism over national institutions) but lacks desirable information for espectators, and there is much more explicit (and convincing) sex in the film than I could imagine.

I'm not sure how I feel about this movie. Some scenes are very uncomfortable to watch and the beginning of the movie made me very interested to explore this religious dystopia yet the way the story was developed felt kinda lackluster to me. I think I was just expecting another plot. Still, it brings some nice questions into light, it is well acted (especially the main character, lived by Dira Paes) and well-shot (loved the neon photography).

If you like Black Mirror, you should give a shot to this film. Just don't watch it with your parents in the room.