Review of Divine Love

Divine Love has to be one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I've ever had in my life. I saw this film at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival with a large audiences and honestly felt extremely baffled with what I was watching. In 2027 Brazil, the society has seemingly grown more religious. The presence of many different cults and churches attempt to keep divine love with couples. A young married woman working at a notary's office works for her church attempting to prevent couples from getting a divorce. This concept alone is very strange however I fear that the film was overly indulgent about its topic without fully developing it. There are compelling ideas presented in Divine Love, it questions the feeling of love, religion and utopia. However these ideas felt under written and under developed, instead the film relies on erotic and pornographic scenes that last far too long which made me feel extremely uncomfortable in such a large theatre. I was attempting to explain to myself that there was a purpose to the eroticism and overly graphic sexual content however the more I think about the less I think that the film is meant to be taken seriously. Before the film even started the director admitted that he only finished work of the film on the day of showing it. I don't know how accurate his answer is but to be honest I will take his word for it. So many scenes felt incomplete and the ideas and commentary felt unfinished. There are some nice special effects (for a lower budget film) that show of this futuristic world. To be honest I was more interested in how this world functioned than on the main character's struggles, which is a sign of rather poor writing. Divine Love is also a decently shot film with great production design, the sets have such an interesting futuristic look with an small hint at retro. But if you were to take away the flash, the only thing that's left is a well produced and semi well acted porno. I wish I could say more but unfortunately this did not the hit the mark for me. The ideas were underdeveloped and the film was badly written with a poor script. Some good performances, good cinematography, excellent production design can not save a badly written film that even has needlessly cringe and excessive content in it.