DIE GOTTLICHE ORDNUNG (THE DIVINE ORDER)
Director: Petra Volpe
Cast: Marie Leuenberger, Max Simonischek, Rachel Braunschweig, Sibylle Brunner, Marta Zoffoli, Bettina Stucky
Rating: (M) ★★★+
Indeed, in 1971, Switzerland became the last European country to allow suffrage at the federal level, a mere 65 years after Finland started the ball rolling.
The Divine Order (Rialto) is set in the weeks leading up to the Swiss vote for women’s suffrage in February 1971, and is centred around the character of Nora (Marie Leuenberger), a young housewife living with her husband and two sons in a small village not too far from Zurich. As the film opens, we see historical footage of the huge social and political upheaval taking place around the world in the late 1960s, but it becomes clear that these changes haven’t begun to filter into Nora’s world, with its traditional, strongly defined gender roles and a marriage law that effectively made women the property of their husband.
A series of events soon conspire to awaken Nora’s political awareness, until she eventually becomes the reluctant spokeswoman in her village for the burgeoning movement, to the shame and embarrassment of her husband and deeply conservative father-in-law, while all the time gathering more support from other local women tired of the status quo.
It’s an entertaining and enlightening story, if a little simplified, with much attention paid to period detail, and is also notable for the number of women involved in key production roles.
- Jeremy Quinn
