Miguel Angel ValdiviaLe Divin trébuchement

The Divine Stumble is the story of Giuseppe da Copertino or Joseph of Cupertin, a Franciscan friar who, after being arrested and tried by the Inquisition because of his untimely levitations, was canonised in 1753, almost one hundred years after his death.

This flying saint, nicknamed the “donkey brother” because of his weak intellectual capacities, particularly fascinated the writer and filmmaker Carmelo Bene. Miguel Angel Valdivia takes up this exceptional destiny to deliver not a historical reconstruction, but a police investigation mixed with science fiction and fantasy, a metaphysical and visionary fable.

The Apulia drawn in ink here is pastoral, a small world isolated from central power, silent and oppressive like a Buñuel film. Everything is seen and known, everything arrives very quickly by rumour or by rider to the ears of the Inquisition. Our Franciscan friar, the devout and clumsy village idiot, creates a series of burlesque events in spite of himself and becomes the idol of jubilant crowds. The competing cult is closely followed by the Pope himself. The drama arrives with the black cadillac of the Holy Inquisition, technologically all-powerful and heavily armed.

Between the twists and turns and after a carefully staged finale, the tragic farce pauses with the dreams of the Pope and Giuseppe. The Divine Stumble is as much a fable as a Chaplin story, telling with the same effectiveness about social control and the internalization of the norm, subjects already regularly explored by Valdivia in painting.