1°
A woman splashes water on her face. Her gaze into the mirror
reflects hopelessness, exhaustion and even depression. She clutches a hot
water bottle in her hands as she wanders aimlessly around her darkened
bedroom. Suddenly the phone rings and she races to the telephone to
answer on the first ring. The caller is an ex-lover who has abandoned her
to marry another women. She cries and takes all responsibility for their
break-up. After speaking and sobbing to him over the phone the line goes
dead. Her desperation flows outward as she clutches the receiver tightly
in her hand while yelling pronto!
over and over again. She calls her lover at home but he’s not there. He
must have called from a restaurant, she believes. She switches off the
light but immediately turns it back on. Tears stream down her face, and
she turns on the radio but turns it off again. Suddenly the phone rings
again. Crying desperately she screams ti amo! And begins to cry
again.
2°
A young shepherdess tends flock on a mountainside. A placid
looking vagabond passes the flock and the shepherdess on his journey but
stops when the young girl begins to scream out for him, thinking he is Saint Joseph . She begs him to take her away
to paradise and confesses that she prays to him daily. Praising his
beauty and purity she tells him about the harassment she receives from the
townspeople who tell her that she will never be accepted into heaven.
Without ever speaking a word or giving her a clue as to his true identity,
the wanderer offers the shepherdess wine and she drifts toward a drunken
sleep. When she wakes up and looks around her saint is nowhere to be
seen. She picks herself up off the ground, gathers her flock and marches
home.
Some time later, she plays with the village children and suddenly
collapses. As the village women bring her to, one tells her that she is
pregnant. She exclaims that it is a child of God and runs to the church
to pray. As word of her pregnancy spreads, the village people treat her
like an outcast. In a final act of mockery, the women of the village
throw flowers at her feet and begin to parade her around while singing Ave
Maria. However, their joke shows through once a woman puts a metal pot on
the shepherdess’ head as a halo and the crowd starts violently hurling
flowers at her. Driven from town, she wanders in the countryside as the
final part of her pregnancy begins, labor. Climbing the top of a hill to
a lonely little church she gives birth to what she believes to be the son
of God.
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