“It was 2027. Brazil had changed.” These are the first words spoken in “Divine Love,” delivered in remote voiceover by a strangely impassive-sounding child — and even as the film’s flickering neons and giddy synth score invite some suspension of reality, it’s hard not to wonder what President Jair Bolsonaro has done with the place. For all its creamy, dreamy styling, Gabriel Mascaro’s limber, sensual sci-fi functions as an urgent cautionary allegory. Set in Brazil’s near future, where conservative Evangelical values — precisely those that the country’s recently elected far-right leadership rode to victory — have swept the population, it’s a heady vision of a secular state hanging by a slender thread. Following a premiere in Sundance’s world cinema competition, the film’s blend of on-the-button politics and seductive aesthetics should make it hot festival property.
This being a Mascaro film, there’s nothing dour about “Divine Love...
This being a Mascaro film, there’s nothing dour about “Divine Love...
- 1/26/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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