Divine Love

The film begins at night as parishioners holding lanterns form a series of processions travelling through the night from Rome and villages in the Abruzzi and Lazio regions to make it to the Santuario della Madonna del Divino Amore 10 miles from the capital by morning More than an anthropological study of ecstatic devotion with its genuflecting disciples and women who scream desperately at the sky Divino Amore also speaks to Manginis interest in disappearing rituals and communities at risk of extinction When generations of worshippers pour out of the church at the end of the service formality dissolves into secular leisure as families perched on horse carts eat plates of spaghetti and men fall asleep on the grass The velvetclad austerity of the churchs interior gives way to a series of pastoral tableaux