By Sara M. Fetters                      Read our Second Review

The Holy Girl a Broken Prayer

Award-winning Argentinean writer/director Lucrecia Martel (“La Ciénaga”) follows up her feature debut with the 2004 Cannes Film Festival competition entry “The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa)”. A bizarre, stupefying surreal narrative motion picture, it is a superbly acted and lyrically photographed enigma culminating in a final ten minutes so head-scratching audiences are near-guaranteed to walk out wondering what the heck just happened to them.

Not that the events depicted in “The Holy Girl” do not have their allure. Whether it is exploring the burgeoning sexuality of teenage girls Amalia (Maria Alché) and Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg), examining the emotional state of Amalia’s hotel manageress mother Helena (Mercedes Morán) or investigating the amorous advances of the visiting middle-aged (and married) Dr. Jano (Carlos Bellos) Martel knows how to shape scenes to maximize their visceral impact. In fact, the first meeting between Dr. Jano and Amalia at an outdoor Theremin demonstration is so startling, so luridly unexpected, I found myself so mesmerized by the vulgar hilarity of the moment I couldn’t wait to see where I was going to be taken next.

The thing is, after a few more sequences like this I realized all too quickly Martel had little to offer other than some dreamlike titillation. The freshly divorced Helena smoothly goes about seducing Dr. Jano (even though she knows it can’t go anywhere due to his marriage) while at the same time angrily denying informational phone calls from her ex-husband’s newly pregnant wife. Dr. Jano masturbates to visions of Amalia while on the side dryly phoning his wife and kids to inform them in monotone how monotonous the medical conference is. Josefina spends her time secretly having anal sex with a friend in order to remain a frontal virgin. Amalia spends all her time making like James Bond, spying on Dr. Jano with winsomely luscious sexual energy as he goes about his daily activities in the hotel.

It’s a strange amalgam of events that can’t help but come to some sort of tragic head. And yet, while everything going on is inherently connected in one way or another with everything else, the whole thing feels so fractured it is nearly impossible to find any way to relate. Worse, when all is finally said and done and all the fireworks are set to go off, “The Holy Girl” is suddenly over, concluding in an awesomely dumfounding scene of teenage bonding that’s literally wet behind the ears.

So why don’t I hate this movie? It’s really hard to explain, but “The Holy Girl,” for all its faults, is made with such an impassioned hand and so blindly emotional in its recklessness it is impossible to take your eyes off of it and even harder to forget. Having seen it at the very start of the Seattle International Film Festival, with only two days left in the almost month-long event I still can’t get it out of my head. From the strangely affecting choir rehearsals where a cadre of young women discusses religion, life and the hidden meaning of faith in their daily lives, to the almost didactic familial conversations between members of the hotel staff which frequently populate the picture, Martel shows such a deft touch I couldn’t help but be impressed.

The cast certainly helps her out. While both the two young actresses at the center are just fine as Amalia and Josefina, the movie is Morán’s show almost start to finish. The actress is galvanizing, somehow maneuvering through all the nooks and crannies of her character’s imperfections with beauteous ease. She is the picture’s heart and soul, everything going on rising and falling with each one of her voluptuous emotional palpitations and exaltations. While Amalia may be the holy girl of the title, Helena is the star; the one person throughout audiences can latch on and relate to.

I wish I could say this was enough to make me happy. It isn’t, however, and I’d by lying if I said “The Holy Girl” even came close to making me smile. Martel’s coda is so unforgivably obtuse I still can’t make heads or tails out of it. While I admire the filmmaker’s drive to do something different, the resulting sermon is still nothing more than an empty prayer begging for a broken heart.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)

"The Holy Girl" - Second Review

By Howard Schumann

"The Holy Girl is not about the confrontation between good and evil, but about the difficulties in distinguishing one from the other" - Lucrecia Martel

The combination of budding adolescent sexuality and Catholic Sunday School sermonizing leads to confusion and trouble in Lucrecia Martel's remarkable second film The Holy Girl. Similar in style to Alain Cavalier's masterful Thérése, another film about religious fervor, The Holy Girl is an extremely intimate series of minimalist vignettes in which the story unfolds in glimpses and whispered conversations, in "a slow reverie of quick moments". As in Thérése, there is no approval or disapproval of behavior, only a snapshot of events that the viewer is left to interpret -- and it can be a challenge.

Set in La Salta, the same small Northern Argentine town as Martel's first feature La Ciénaga, the film takes place at a run down hotel that is hosting a medical convention of ear, nose, and throat doctors. The scene is a constant flux of people and movement and it is difficult at first to sort out the characters. Amalia (Maria Alché) is the sixteen-year old daughter of the hotel's manager Helena (Mercedes Moran) who is recently divorced and lives with her brother Freddy (Alejandro Urdapilleta). Helena suffers from an inner ear problem that is reflected in a discordant ringing noise that affects her relationship with the world around her.

As the film opens, Inés (Mia Maestro), a young Catholic teacher leads a group of girls in choir practice. "What is it, Lord, you want of me?" she sings. Overcome with emotion, tears well up in her eyes but Amalia and her friend Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg) merely whisper to each other about the teacher's alleged love affairs. The talk in class is about the student's "mission" and how they can recognize the signs that point to God's calling. Amalia thinks she sees a sign when a doctor attending the conference, Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso) goes in for some sexual touching while she stands in a group listening to a performance on the Theremin, an instrument that is not touched, but is played by disturbing the surrounding air (perhaps the way adults ought to deal with adolescents).

The character's motivations are complex and defy easy categorizing. Jano is a family man with children but seems driven by sexual longings. Helena, still seething that her ex-husband has just fathered twins by his new wife, is attracted to Jano but her advances are not reciprocated and her relationship with Freddy has a hint of more than brotherly love. Josefina teases her young cousin but holds back from committing herself, yet fully engages in kissing with Amalia, though what it means to them is uncertain. Amalia thinks that her mission is to save Dr. Jano and seductively follows him around the hotel, even entering his room when he is not there. At first not relating Amalia's stalking to the incident in the crowd, Jano becomes fearful that his medical career will be jeopardized when he discovers her identity, but the die is cast and Amalia's casual relating the incident to Josefina leads to unintended results.

The Holy Girl is elusive and somewhat disorienting, yet it remains an extraordinary achievement, full of intensity and crackling tension, true to the way people act when they are dealing with feelings bubbling beneath the surface. The girls live in their own little world, oblivious to the havoc they have unleashed and it is Martel's brilliant direction that allows us to enter that world, and it is not always comfortable. What happens in the film may be inappropriate but it never seems perverse. We expect the characters to be either heroes or villains but Martel sees them only as flawed human beings. Like the knowing half-smile etched on Amalia's face, her universe is imbued with a mystery that simply observes rather than evaluates. If the ending does not provide us with immediate gratification, it may be because it respects that mystery.

Film Grade: A-