The Holy Girl (2004) User Reviews

Awakenings

[jotix100 · 8/10 · 1 June 2005]

Lucrecia Martel, the director of "The Holy Girl" gives us an erotically charged account of a young woman's awakening to a world that she seems not to be ready for. Ms. Martel combines a mixture of religion and eroticism in the narrative of the film. As always, the director gathers an interesting cast to tell her story.

It's interesting to read some of the negative comments to this forum. Most perceive the film as boring and slow. In fact, the film is far from that, and it was surprising to see the movie the other day at the Lincoln Plaza complex with a theater half full and nobody walked out of the film, something that we have witnessed viewers to do with other, more acclaimed features.

Ms. Martel takes us to a remote spot in Northern Argentina, an improbable place for holding a medical convention. At the same time, the director, in an interview we read, tells about how the location, which she knew from having been as a guest, made an impression on her and she based her story at the hotel.

Amalia is a young girl that is just awakening to a sexuality that goes against her upbringing. We see her surrounded by her school mates and the loyal Josefina, her best friend. Ines, who seems older, leads the group in prayer, perhaps to get the young women's mind into their latent sexual awakenings. Amalia lives in the hotel with her mother, an attractive woman who seems to be oblivious to what's going on with her daughter. In fact, one gets the impression the mother enjoys whatever sex she gets to the fullest.

Enter the roguish Dr. Jano. He is on his own, attending the medical conference, although he is married and has about four children. When Dr. Jano goes into town he spots a group watching a street performance and immediately gravitates toward the beautiful young woman he sees as someone he can casually rub himself against the girl without attracting attention. Amalia realizes what's going on and starts following this enigmatic man, who proves to be elusive in the open. He is more of a voyeur rather than a man that would lead Amalia into an open sexual encounter. Everything is done in a subtle way, which in a way works better because of the shock it provokes on the viewer. In a way, Ms. Martel makes us voyeurs because through her camera, she makes us watch what Dr. Jano is doing to Amalia.

The acting Ms. Martel got from the principals is amazing. Maria Alche is a girl of great beauty. She is an intense young woman who fits perfectly in the story. The other good performance comes from Carlos Belloso. His Dr. Jano is an enigma as we watch him. In a way it shows this man as a duplicitous person who being married, will go and try to get his thrills in dark places, probably sitting next to unsuspecting young women in movies, or wherever he can be aroused without being obvious. Mia Maestro is Ines, the pious woman who is seen giving religious instruction to the girls. Julieta Zyberberg is good as Josefina and Mercedes Moran also has great moments as Helena.

This is a disturbing film, but one that dares to speak of things that other film makers avoid. Ms. Martel shows she is a director that doesn't mind taking chances.

Evocative Portrayal of Teen Girls Obsessions vs. Adults

[noralee · 7/10 · 2 June 2005]

"The Holy Girl (La Niña santa)" effectively captures the obsessive, all-consuming passions of adolescent girls, like an Argentinian "Thirteen" suffused by Catholicism instead of California pop culture.

Young teens are shown exploring their faith as equally as their bodies and the new found power of their sexuality, as a religious instructor, Mía Maestro of TV's "Alias" protectively, and finally impatiently, tries to channel their avidity into becoming a nun.

But one of the girls comes into contact with the panoply of the perfidy of adults in an intriguing situation, as part of the family of resident managers of a resort hotel. The film focuses on the week when a medical convention brings partying doctors into her and her mother's sights.

Writer/director Lucrecia Martel adds an interesting element, recalling but much less brutally than "Blue Car" and "Fat Girl (a ma soeur)," when an older abuser crosses paths with the curious adolescent. Ironically, here he is a nondescript, middle-aged husband and father but he gets off on anonymous rubbing up in crowds (which is eerily accompanied by a street musician playing the spooky-sounding theremin), that she confuses for more direct attention into what she transfers as her religious "mission" (at least that's how it's translated).

The parallel story with the flirtatious mother is less convincing, even with some sort of jealous motivation because her ex's young trophy wife is now pregnant and her boredom with some sort of ongoing, casual relationship she has with another hotel employee.

The film ends on an oddly sympathetic note for the fetishist as his needed anonymity is gradually lost over the course of the week, with a negative view of the teenage girls as they manipulatively deflect adult notice from their experiments.

The English subtitles are very awkwardly translated. Some of the English words have a disjointed connotation and are downright confusing.

The cinematography is very lush and warm, reflecting the girls' overheated emotions.

Girls go wild, quietly

[chuzzlewit-1 · 8/10 · 4 May 2005]

To enjoy "The Holy Girl," you have to watch it in a certain way. Watching for plot will leave you unsatisfied; I'd recommend watching for character instead. Lucrecia Martel attempts to use her impressive technique to nail down the psychology of her characters; this works especially well for her protagonist, Amalia. While freewheeling through the bush near the reputed site of a post-car crash miracle, a fade to silence fills the air with Amalia's desire for transcendence. (Martel's sound is expressive throughout, particularly a theremin solo as weirdly kinky as the scene it illustrates.)

The most interesting relationship is between Amalia and Jose. Shallow but not empty, they're attractive not because of their bone structure but because of their vitality - it shines through even when they're bored, which is most of the time. Their bond isn't as intense as Kate Winslet's and Melanie Lynskey's in "Heavenly Creatures," but it's the same sort of friendship (albeit not consummated), only things spin out of control in a less bloodstained way. Amalia and a mildly perverted doctor also have some amusing scenes, while the character of Amalia's mother fails to add any more than the predictable ironies.

The movie ends where it ends to avoid humiliating the characters any more than is strictly necessary; I like these endings where something is left to the viewers' imaginations, though obviously not everyone would agree. Some of Martel's social themes, like the way the middle class appropriates religion to serve itself, are lost along the way. "The Holy Girl" isn't as lovably wild as "Y tu mamá también," but on the topic of sexual hypocrisy, it's just as smart, and maybe funnier.

Stunning and disturbing!

[deneuve2 · 27 August 2004]

Director and co-writer, Lucrecia Martel (Argentina, 1966), has certainly re-written the Lolita story. But this time, the older male finds a more complex younger female in his way. The world is small and certainly claustrophobic, mainly a hotel with mineral baths somewhere in the Santiago del Estero region in Argentina called Las Termas. Tourists come and go into this hotel where all employees form a kind of extended family. Amalia, played by María Alché,is a 15 year-old immersed in the study of catechism and sexual awakening. The great question becomes that of vocation, "what does God wishes me to do." Dr. Jano, played by Carlos Belloso, attends a professional medical conference at Las Termas and engages in improper sexual conduct in a public street of the small town. Once discovered by Amalia, his remorse grows as things become more and more entangled. Amalia and Dr. Jano engage in a mesmerizing game of hide and seek, of desire to redeem and fear of the consequences of losing anonymity.

La niña santa is a haunting film, beautifully shot and full of complex nuances as well as tension. It left me with a sense of "what happened here?" Regarding its director, Pedro Almodovar (one of the film's executive producers) as said that she knows is part of his list of favorite film directors. Perhaps he sees in Martel's work the subtleties that he himself lacks.

Don't Be Misled

[anon_critic · 6/10 · 17 May 2005]

Critic A.O. Scott called La Niña santa "a miracle" in his NY Times review, comparing director Martel's style to the French New Wave filmmakers, but this comment is as widely off the mark as Martel's muddled narrative.

From the beginning, Martel fails to adequately characterize her lead actress, a confused teenage girl in the throes of a frustrated sexual awakening.

Martel's attempt to outline her protagonist's life in her mother's family-run hotel, leading to her unfortunate encounter with a medical doctor attending a conference there, suffers from numerous pointless digressions. Situations and subplots mostly lead nowhere as Martel appears to be discovering her narrative as she directs it.

Despite an engagingly offhand visual style, Martel's storytelling lacks the impact to fully invest the audience in the characters' lives and struggles. As the bland antagonist, the doctor remains mostly a cypher, communicating little and revealing less.

The inconclusive conclusion, which will undoubtedly frustrate some viewers, seems oddly appropriate for a film uncertain about what point it's trying to make.

Save yourself a trip to the theater -- this is strictly video rental material.

Visually beautiful but could have been better

[bleachbypass · 6/10 · 11 May 2005]

Martel's sophomore effort proves her to be as exciting a visualist as the Dardenne brothers and Almodovar (who snags an executive producer credit on the pic). 'The Holy Girl' is technically brilliant in almost every respect, the film is generally comprised of static, densely layered, close ups that provide an engaging intimacy with the actors. The use of purely diagetic music is blatantly self conscious, yet it works wonders for the picture.

Parochial student Amalia lives in a family owned hotel with divorcée mother Helena. A medical conference fills the hotel up with doctors, including the bizarrely enigmatic Dr. Jano. Both Amalia and Helena wind up inappropriately vying for the married man's affections for very different reasons.

The film's beginning is cold and confusing, and the characters aren't really accessible until about a half our in. The film's mysterious and difficult elements are consistent and become a nice asset later on. Is. Jano's indiscretion with Amalia limited to the crotch-push at the Theremin performance or was there something more?

While 'The Holy Girl' has semi-interesting characters, and a semi-interesting story, it could certainly have been more so. The superb cinematography can only carry the film so far. At some points the film is simply boring. Martel certainly has the vision and talent to be on par Lynne Ramsay, but she's not quite there yet.

An extraordinary achievement

[howard.schumann · 9/10 · 6 June 2005]

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.

piety tempered with lust

[Buddy-51 · 7/10 · 14 August 2006]

"The Holy Girl" is an offbeat look at the thin line that separates piety from eroticism in the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl. Amalia lives with her mother and uncle in a family-run hotel which is currently hosting a medical convention for a group of out-of-town doctors. Amalia has been convinced by her religious instructor that she needs to seek a spiritual "calling" if she is to fulfill her duty as a pious child of God. When one of the doctors from the convention intentionally rubs up against her in a crowd (at this point he doesn't yet realize that she is the daughter of the hotel proprietress), Amalia determines that her "calling" will be the salvation of the man's soul. Thus, she begins to spy on the man, eventually arousing his suspicion and causing a great deal of trouble for them both. The problem is that Amalia, just beginning to blossom into a sexual being in her own right, can't avoid infusing lustful thoughts for the man into her spiritual meditations. To further complicate matters, Amalia's mother, Helena, has begun to have feelings for the doctor herself, completely unaware of the strange connection that exists between him and her daughter.

Written and directed by Lucretia Martel, this Argentine film takes its time setting up its storyline and introducing its characters. At first it feels unfocused and unclear as we try to figure out who is who and how everyone is related to everyone else, but eventually Martel manages to bring all the elements together so that we become intrigued by what the film is showing us. Amalia seems like any other teenager who is trying to balance a burgeoning sexuality with the strong religious convictions inculcated in her by those around her, while Dr. Jano comes across less as an evil pedophile than as a pathetic middle-aged man who should know better than to actually act upon his perverse sexual impulses. And even though Helena is less directly involved in the main plot of the film than these other two characters, she is actually the figure on whom our interest truly alights, mainly thanks to Mercedes Moran who is lovely and dignified in the role of an aging, but still beautiful woman whose life seems to have lost much of its meaning in recent years (her ex-husband is about to become the father of twins with his new wife, a fact that does not sit well with the slighted Helena).

"The Holy Girl" doesn't try to dazzle us with scenes of high drama or a sordid resolution, or even a resolution of any kind, which may frustrate the more literal-minded among us. It lets its story play out naturally, almost to the point where the movie seems to be drifting aimlessly from time to time. Yet, we stay involved thanks to the unusual storyline and the fine performances by Moran, Alche and Belloso. This isn't what one would call a major work, but it provides some food for thought about how we can't always control the events we foolishly and thoughtlessly set into motion (Amalia and Dr. Jano both learn this truism the hard way). It's a lesson, the film insists, that we heed or ignore at our own peril.

An other opinion...La Niña Santa: shades of Kieslowski

[colman-hogan · 9/10 · 11 April 2006]

La Niña Santa is one of the smartest, sexiest, tenderest, funniest, quiet-and-unassuming movies I've seen in the last half dozen years. It delivers a velvet glove, emotional coup-de-grace (despite the diminuendo ending), and for precisely the reasons the other reviewer adjudged it 'one of the worst movies' she'd ever seen. Isn't curious how we all differ?; the screenplay is intelligent without being smart-alec, nuanced in the most tender of manners, and slyly humorous. Yes, it takes 13 minutes, or more, to figure out what's what and that is only one of the film's glories. What may seem like amateurish framing is clearly a masterful use of the camera in a sensual-naturalistic mode. Its hard to believe this is writer-director's (Lucrecia Martel) second feature film; there is an understated command of all the elements of cinema that reminds one of Kieslowski (and the brothers Dardenne; Truffaut); and perhaps that is another reason the film has elicited strong reaction.

The Kieslowski reference is not casual, for the theme of the film is the subtle palpitations of the heart, in particular feminine desire, conjoined with a moral dilemma. Much of the plot focuses on Amalia, the teenage daughter of Helena, a sophisticated divorcée who runs a hot-springs resort where a doctor's conference is being held. Dr. Jano, the third protagonist, takes a somewhat perverse fancy to Amalia, 'casually' rubbing himself up against her in a crowd on the street packed around a man performing on a theremin. This incident (which is reprised) in conjunction with Amalia's religious - 'what is our vocation in God?' - instruction (also reprised) serves to awaken Amalia's desire in, what to her, is a disturbing and profound manner: she conceives that she has been given a 'sign' of her vocation to save the soul of this anonymous man.

Complications arise, mostly for Dr. Jano, when he meets Helena in the hotel bar and falls gently into the perfume of their mutual attraction. Amalia keeps following him, haunting him in a way he is not comfortable with, all the while he is being drawn to Helena and she to him. Slowly it dawns on him that Amalia is Helena's daughter and he realizes, but he alone, that he is caught in a moral bind.

One of the supreme glories of this story is the tender way in which the group of teenage girls, Amalia and her friends, are represented (again this reminds one of Kieslowski, the brothers Dardenne, Truffaut). They are seen to be curious and critical-skeptical, naive and wise, awakening to a world of desire about which they are 'technically' ignorant and innocent. María Alche as Amalia, has a face and a presence that is at once homely and luminous. It is so rare, and so moving, to encounter a story in which the dilemmas of teenagers are given as much credence as adults, treated by the story-teller (both script and camera) with respect, compassion, love, and understanding; and this is even more rare, I think, when it concerns teenage girls. If you love women, whatever your gender, you might just fall in love with La Niña Santa.

A revelation; Lucrecia Martel (writer-director) is clearly a new and major point of reference on the world cinematic horizon.

Some Argentines Full Of Beans Do It

[writers_reign · 6/10 · 12 February 2005]

This is a toughie to dope. It's difficult to figure out its target audience. Set in a spa town in Argentina the principal characters either live in a hotel or are visiting it for a Medical Conference. One of the doctors, an ENT man who resembles Arthur Miller (the late Arthur Miller as Miller's death has just been announced) has a penchant for frottage and naturally his target is an adolescent girl knee-deep in religious instruction classes - and incidentally a member of one of the most unprepossessing classes in screen history, it's almost as if there were a second convention being staged, a Plain Jane convention - who decides she has been chosen to save him. Things take a predictable twist when the girl's divorced mother is also drawn to the doc. If ambiguity is In this season then this is right where it's at cutting edge wise.

A Seemingly Great Film

[Eye-on-the-pie-in-the-sky · 5/10 · 27 June 2005]

More admirable than attractive is Lucrecia Martel's "The Holy Girl" – even at this time I am feeling a steady amount of ambivalence toward this maddeningly beautiful film. Is this kind of paradoxical relationship even possible? Even the proverbial sinner in his love/hate toward expiation seems dubious.

The film follows Amalia and her friend Josefina's exploits as they navigate their way through a summer of adolescence. Sanctimonious doesn't even begin to describe them – indeed, Amalia is wanting to screw a man she's trying to "save" while Josefina regards her Catholic school teacher with disdain due to the good teacher's sexual adventures even though Josefina herself takes it up the arse from her horny boyfriend. This shopworn irony regarding the duality and dialectical impulses in hormonal, affectedly pious people grows wearisome on the attention span.

Okay, but I used the adjective "beautiful" earlier. And it most certainly is from a logistical standpoint. The DP composed seemingly interminable, achingly gorgeous shots of the action. He had no qualms about not using deep-focus photography (in which everything in the frame is in focus). This style harks back to the old American B&W's in which they were not afraid to focus on only one piece of the frame while leaving the rest in a blurry discombobulation. A power erupts from the screen the more pronounced these shots are. However, it must be said, the steady frequency of all this becomes stultifying to an annoying degree – like chocolate in endless supply, it becomes too much of a good thing.

This cloying film would have been great if it didn't try so hard to be a great film. Art house flicks mostly subscribe to an overly snobby and abundantly complex ideological schema. Is a show-off praiseworthy? Not in this case.

Lucrecia Martel: An Argentinean Filmmaker in the Vein of Buñuel and Almodóvar

[gradyharp · 10/10 · 12 September 2005]

Lucrecia Martel is one gifted artist. Her latest film, 'La Niña santa' (The Holy Girl) was conceived, written and directed in a style that is a tough and puzzling of Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar: what you see on the screen is an enigmatic mixture of sexuality and spirituality, comedy and drama, polemics and parody, all woven together in a fascinatingly beautiful story that demands a lot from the audience. Martel is a talent of enormous potential and magnitude.

In a somewhat seedy hotel somewhere in Argentina (? Buenos Aires,? Rosario) lives divorced party planner Helena (a brilliant Mercedes Morán), her also divorced brother Freddy (Alejandro Urdapilleta), and her teenage daughter Amalia (María Alche). Amalia goes to parochial school with her friend Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg) and there they study Catholic life and the need for a 'vocation'. Both girls are caught up in the throes of adolescent sexual awakening and committed spiritual development, with the loggerheads the two themes can produce. Josefina is having safe sex (ie anal sex) while demanding that her perpetrator not speak during the act. Amalia finds a different encounter.

In the hotel is a convention of doctors, among them one Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso) who, though married with children, has a secretive act of pressing himself against the buttocks of young girls (an act of molestation), and while listening to a street Thermin player, he rubs against Amalia. Amalia becomes obsessed with the act and its possible permutations and finally decides that this man's redemption is her 'vocation'. While she confides the incidents to Josefina, she otherwise keeps her secret.

Meanwhile Helena is monitoring the doctors' convention and meets Dr Jano, is attracted to him, and agrees to be an 'actress' for a convention closing drama on doctor/patient relationships. Dr Jano is invited to Helena's room where of course he meets the stalking Amalia, and the tension of the multiple innuendos mounts. Dr Jano's family arrives at the convention dousing Helena's hopes for a assignation, but encouraging Amalia to corner Jano to reassure him he is a good man (ie, she provides his redemption - her 'vocation' commitment for her spiritual training). How this plays out in the end provides the food for post-film thought and is best left for the viewer to see.

Martel's technique for drawing characters is unique and extraordinary, made all the stronger from her carefully selected cast of top-flight actors (many of whom she has used in prior projects, 'La Cienega' etc). Her camera designs (fulfilled by cinematographer Félix Monti) and her wondrous emphasis on sound (including original music by Andres Gerzenson as well as repeated use of Thermin reproduction of music by Bach and Bizet) give her film a special look that is becoming her trademark.

Her executive producer is Pedro Almodóvar which should tell the audience a lot about the importance of this film. Lucrecia Martel creates difficult, highly intelligent, at times meandering, but always fascinating movies. She is a budding giant in the industry. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp

Complex film is an intricate look at human behavior

[rosscinema · 7/10 · 1 June 2005]

This film isn't about the sordid act that takes place on a young girl but rather how she handles new feelings that have been brought to the surface which she incorporates into her religious beliefs and uses it as a vocational calling. Amalia (Maria Alche) is a young teenager who lives in a hotel in Argentina with her divorced mother Helena (Mercedes Moran) and she spends her time going to bible classes and swimming in the hotel pool. Helena is also the hotel manager and her establishment is hosting a medical conference for the week and one doctor in particular is going to act in a very inappropriate manner to Amalia.

*****SPOILER ALERT***** Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso) is attending the conference and he notices a crowd of people outside a large window and he ends up standing behind Amalia and shoving his groin into her backside. Later, Amalia tells her best friend Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg) but not her mother and she vows to save the soul of this person as part of a religious vocation and ends up following him around the hotel and sneaking into his room. Dr. Jano becomes very friendly with Helena and an attraction starts between them but he's unaware that it's actually her daughter that he's groped until one day he's introduced to her. Amalia is going through a sexual awakening and while this puts her at odds with her beliefs she uses this for strength in her mission of Dr. Jano's redemption.

This is only the second film by director/writer Lucrecia Martel and while Aregentina isn't exactly known as a hotbed in terms of cinema there has been some provocative talent that has slowly reared it's head and Martel arguably shows the most promise. The story in this film isn't about how a young girl gets molested but instead it's about how this event triggers a sexual awakening that collides with her teachings of the bible. One of the more interesting things in the script is how Amalia's attraction to Dr. Jano ends up with her actually becoming angel-like in her mission and also serving as his nagging conscience for his disreputable actions. With her half grin/smirk and solid screen presence Alche gives a thought provoking performance that makes viewers take notice and it will be very interesting watching her career unfold. Martel's script certainly doesn't consider religion as a way of avoiding the harshest of realities but it does seem that she wants her characters to be as realistic and complex as people really are in life. The character of Josefina is the perfect example of what I'm trying to explain in that her character is religious and wants to stay a virgin until her wedding night but she has a boyfriend and in order to stay that way she engages in anal. This is one of those films that stays with a viewer for some time and Martel's talent in direction and writing are the main reasons for this as she has emerged as one of the more interesting filmmakers to come out of South America in years.

Senseless movie

[crazyforsean · 1/10 · 28 October 2004]

Sorry, but as an Argentinian woman, I can't stop saying that this movie was so bad for me. Like her other movie "La ciénaga", Lucrecia Martel continues without saying anything to me clearly, when I was trying to understand this movie, it ended!!! I don't understand anything of it, and I wasn't the only. What happened with Dr.Jano and Helena?? What it is means the two girls in the swimming pool at the end?? Sorry,maybe this kind of movie is for high level mind or something, but I think that I am intelligent, I like European movies a lot, and Argentinian movies are similar to them,but this movie specially sucks! 0/0

Catholic Dolores Haze

[chaos-rampant · 6 January 2013]

As far as I'm concerned, the film is an outstanding achievement in cinematic narrative, I'm tentatively including it as one of the very best I have seen. A lot of viewers have complained about the slumbering, monotonous tone and the filmmaker's insistence to not explain her vague story, which capped off by the high-handed gesture of the ending—the only note off for me—can give the impression that this is another in a long list of 'artsy', fashionably minimal film festival fodder.

Fair points, but consider something else.

The story is fairly simple, a Catholic girl looks to save the soul of a middle- aged doctor.

I'm not sure if Lolita was consciously the template, indeed the film differs in obvious ways—the doctor makes covert sexual advances, but he is a sincerely troubled man, and from her end the girl perceives these to be a sign from god that this man has strayed and needs saving. There is family dysfunction as background and a lot of religious talk on the divine plan. But there is something deeper Lolitaesque, more in a while.

Okay so the basic means of expression are in Altman's mode of narrative drifting, but with the difference of a static camera and the drift carried through in the movement of bodies and sound. If you read up on what the filmmaker has to say, she reveals stumbling on to this in an interesting way, not via film school but intimate observations of family. She seems like an alert, curious mind who likes to observe, the basis of everything.

The film begins in a shapeless, rumbling state, and only gradually establishes a few things; the place is a hotel, a doctors' convention is scheduled to take place, the man is married with kids, the girl's mother is divorced. It only begins to acquire shape when both the girl and her mother take an interest in the sullen man. Ordinary so far.

Here's where it gets really cool.

The notion is that there is a a sign which female intuition picks up, the sign kicks off a story of connection, but for obvious reasons the story cannot be consummated in the open, it has to be submerged, disguised for busy, prying eyes. (the hotel residents' as well as our own)

But now look at all these different things going on. A man in the shop window who creates invisible sounds and draws a crowd enthralled at the mystery of his creation, the remote sounds of hunters' gunfire which alarm the girl in the woods to something horrible, the talk of an invisible godvoice, the mother's unexplained persistent earbuzz. Both the mother and the doctor have acted in plays (the doctor as a doctor!), and a doctor- patient re-enactment before an audience is proposed to the mother by the taciturn doctor. And the most revealing, another doctor is caught in mischief with a young girl, which foreshadows shame and public embarrassment.

The core scene that perfectly encapsulates what this is all about, is when we discover how the man in the shop window has been producing his peculiar sounds—a theremin, calligraphic hands drawing from thin air the shape of sound, something out of nothing, which is a stunning metaphor for the urges that overtake us in life.

So as characters move through the world, they draw illusory currents in the air which on the topmost level acquire dramatic shape that reveals soul. It is this that masterfully recalls Lolita and in a far deeper way than either of the two film adaptations—a story which is both the story and faintly reveals the haze of urges (sexual, spiritual) of hidden inner selves as they shift and shiver behind their acceptable roles in that story.

Each of these things amazes. I was in awe of a few.

Together, they suggest one of the brightest, most intelligent voices in film these days, one of perhaps only three working right now for me. What's keeping her back? For my taste, the unoriginal camera. She just hasn't yet discovered her own calligraphic eye that will set her apart, though I'm sure that is in her future. For all I know, she has found it in her next film.

I wish her the best of luck. In the meantime, see this and contemplate on the rich tapestry she has woven.

Don't Cry For Argentina's Precious Teen Age Girls!

[mike-925 · 7/10 · 10 December 2007]

I've just seen this scintillating HBO foreign movie from Argentina. It is so slick, so stacked with moral cards, the filmmaker couldn't bring herself to show the apocalyptic ending. Its called the Holy Girl. The film is about a divorced woman who works in a hotel where she lives with her daughter. The hotel is playing host to a physician's convention. Her daughter Amalia and other girls her age (16) are taking Catholic instructions from a lay woman on how to discover one's religious calling. The mother, Helena, has just learned her ex has had twins by another woman in Chile. She is jealous.

Amalia and her girlfriend Josephina mix sexual chatter with spiritual uplift at Instructions each day. Josephina tells her the instructor makes love with a strange man the minute she can break away from the class, a myth both lusting teenagers would like to believe. The two girls pretend at making love together in place of the real thing. One of the doctors at the conference attracts the eye of the mother who begins to play up to him. He is married. Meanwhile, the daughter is standing watching a street musician perform when the same doctor - his name is Nano- comes up close behind her and rubs his penis up against her rear end while standing behind her. The girl's face is fearful and distorted while this is going on. Doctor Nano abruptly stops and moves away. The daughter tells her friend she has been 'groped.' But secretly, she is smitten with the fiftyish Doctor, and spends the rest of the film trying to coax him to make love to her.

Meanwhile Helena is trying too. The Doctor is seriously interested in doing something with Mom, and slightly troubled about the young girl. He used to bring his wife to these conferences but doesn't any longer. Amalia keeps pressing him, making him more nervous. He conceives a little play-let of a doctor patient interaction to be played in front of the audience of doctors.

Meanwhile, Amalia's horny girl friend Jospehina is seen having sex with her brother Julia, when their folks walk in. Needing a distraction to keep the parents from taking notice, she reveals that Amalia has been 'groped' by one of the conference doctors. The parents resolve to tell Helena what has happened. Increasingly nervous about what he knows of these developments, Doctor Nano has summoned his wife and family to travel to the hotel and join him. Nano is just finishing having sex with Amalia when his family arrives in the hotel lobby. Meanwhile, another doctor tells him one of the conference doctors has been caught having sex with a salesman's rep at the conference and has fled to save his reputation.

A frantic Nano considers his own options. The play-let is underway. Josephina's parents have alerted the conference organizer that one of their brethren is a child molester. Onstage, Helena waits in a chair for the doctor to enter stage right. Instead, Nano stands backstage petrified to go on. The filmmaker cuts to the two sixteen year olds swimming together in the hotel pool, chatting amiably about girlish matters, the big showdown event apparently behind without disturbing them greatly.

Here's the way I think it really ends: Waiting backstage, Nano decides to chuck the career, the family, everything. He pulls off his white doctor's smock, runs down to the pool and grabs Amalia who is waiting smiling for him, her suitcase already packed. The two of them move to Chile near the mother's divorced husband who has just had the twin boys. Later Josephina moves with her brother Julian to Chile to join them. Later still, Helena joins her daughter in Chile where mother and daughter have ribald sexual encounters Nano-a-Nano with the harried doctor, now more nervous than ever.

You see there is an element of Pedro Almovador humor infused in this film. The movie is being vaguely subverted by subtle comedy at every turn, including a running joke about a foreign immigrant women in the hotel who no one knows or likes. She sprays rooms for bugs, smells, roaches, no one quite knows what she's spraying for; she enters rooms when it is most inconvenient for the people already in them.

A Masterpiece.

[world2you · 10/10 · 1 November 2004]

I lack words to express how impressed I was with Argentina's "La Niña Santa". It's easily of one of the best South American films in recent history, along with "City of God" and "Amores Perros".

The film follows a very simple plot: an attractive single mother lives in a hotel with her teenage daughter, and they are currently having many guests over for a science committee. Among the guests is Doctor Jano, a reserved and mysterious middle-aged man.

The film then proceeds to analyze and dissect the relationship between the three in an incredibly haunting and uncompromising manner. Seldom can a moviegoer be treated to such exquisite work in writing, cinematography and acting as with "La Niña Santa".

In addition to that, the relationship between the two teenage girls, Amalia and Josefina is one of the most realistic and beautiful portrays of adolescent life I have ever seen.

Simply the greatest film of 2004 and one of the best of this decade so far.

conference of sexuality and salvation

[lee_eisenberg · 8/10 · 28 April 2017]

Even though the discovery of one's burgeoning sexuality is a common theme in cinema, "La niña santa" ("The Holy Girl" in English) still bears watching. Teenage girl Amalia has two experiences in a dilapidated hotel that will change her life forever: an exploration of her sexuality with her friend Josefina, and a microaggression from a doctor.

The significance of Amalia's Catholic schooling was ambiguous. The movie makes clear that Amalia thinks that she has to save the doctor from this inappropriate behavior. What I couldn't quite figure out was whether the movie treated her Catholicism as a virtue or a problem. In the end, what's important is the focus on the contrast between sexual vulnerability and sexual power. Having seen this movie, I hope to see more movies by Lucrecia Martel.

I am Impressed with the Favorable Marketing of this Awful Low-Budget Movie

[claudio_carvalho · 1/10 · 10 March 2006]

Yesterday, in my lunch time, I saw this new-released DVD on sale in a store. I had no information about "La Niña Santa", but its cover had the symbols of participation in the Cannes, Toronto and New York Festivals, and four favorable reviews (from "Le Monde", "Premiere", Sergio Rizzo (unknown for me) from the "Folha de São Paulo" and "New York Times"). When I read the name of one of the producers, Pedro Almodóvar, and that this movie was awarded in the "Mostra International de Cinema de São Paulo", I unfortunately decided to buy it.

"La Niña Santa" is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The screenplay is terrible: the viewer can see that the story is in a Latin country (Argentina indeed), but the explanation is only found reading the cover of the DVD. It takes thirteen minutes to understand that the location is a hotel welcoming a conference of physicians and surgeons. The group of gossipy girls in a choir is never explained if they belong to a church or school. The amateurish framing recalled my son, when he was a baby boy and had some trouble to use the camcorder, cutting heads, shoulders, legs of feet in his footages; the same happens along the whole movie. Based on the foregoing remarks, the poor direction is simply terrible. Last but not the least, even the cast composed by ugly actors and actress is not attractive. My advice: although having a great lobby, do not waste your time and money in this crap. My vote is one.

Title (Brazil): "A Menina Santa" ("The Saint Girl")

A subtle, beautifully acted, well written study of the contradictions of female adolescence

[fmoramar · 9/10 · 28 May 2005]

This is a film that will not appeal to everyone (see previous comment) but I loved it. It's an extremely subtle portrayal of a young female teenager growing up in a Latin American culture with it's odd views of sexuality (you can have anal sex before marriage and still consider yourself a virgin) and its sometimes overbearing religiosity. It also portrays the life of a divorced single mom in that culture with insight and exactness. The young actress who plays Amelia is a future star--she has the slyest smile and the most expressive face I've seen on the screen in ages. And Mercedes Moran, who plays her mother, is also excellent. It's written and directed by the very talented Lucrecia Martel whose direction conveys a sense of eavesdropping on these people's lives. A beautifully done film.

Not even two beers can help digest this movie.

[vmarthirial · 1/10 · 13 October 2005]

The first time I started to watch this movie was after drinking two beers pretending they would be enough to send my stressful day at work into the past and help me indulge in the simple pleasures of idleness.

I couldn't understand anything of the first 20 minutes and falling sleep won the match. I didn't take this loosely the next day, first of all I speak Spanish and the language was not an issue, secondly, if two beers are making me so incompetent, AA in my area will be my next google search.

So I decided to give the movie (and me) a new chance the next night. This time, though, no beer, volume all the way up and the intention of conquering a task with the eagerness that can come only from being defeated at it beforehand.

Nope, still no good. This time I say the whole thing and I must say, this is the Iraq war of movies: A complete mess without justification.

On purpose I will leave aside the cinematic details so I don't sound like a wannabe connoisseur (MS Word corrected this word, BTW) or a reviewer with some clout, I am just a disgruntle customer exposed to this almost comic levels of ineptness portrayed as a Drama film.

Well, the single merit of this thing is that it has more scenes of people lying on beds than a porn movie (but in this case, they are not doing anything, just there… and still there…. There….forever). Secondly, actors don't do anything (again); they are just Argentinean mannequins whispering some absurd words in an environment that makes no sense with a plot that seems to have been written on the back of the check that founded this idea of a film.

The trite recipe of inserting some shocking scenes on the film so they carry the chore of making the rest of the movie worth something, again, fails. The director shows almost a sadistic delight on keeping the camera 6 inches away from the unanimated character, thinking that this is enough to portray a study of human something (sickness, emotions, whatever because we never know at the end) and give a social commentary of something even more groped by intellectualoids: Religion and Sex. The time goes by and nothing happens, nothing is concluded. This idleness is way better than the one I was expecting from my two beers the day before, but this is not fun, this is a waste.

Blockbuster now remembers me as "the crazy dude that wanted a refund for a bad movie he rented". Well, yes, I returned this movie, made a scene and got my $4.86 back. Is not possible that rubbish like this gets distributed and God forbids, other project got rejected or delayed. I know is not a fair world, but this is testing the limits.

I will always support foreign movies, especially from Latin America, but something I can't support is to perpetuate mediocrity by implying that because the movie was produced in Argentina or that the director is a woman, or that the theme is so controversial, it can get away by overlooking quality, coherence or merit.

The good news is that my drinking is not a health issue (yet). This movie is awful, drunk or sober.

Accomplished film-making; lacks personality.

[Delly · 18 May 2005]

I'm in general not a fan of Spanish-language cinema, for the same reason that I don't care for Russian classical music; it's usually overheated and unsubtle, telegraphing emotions like Yiddish theater. For every hypnotic or erotic sequence in Almodovar, there's another that's just juvenile and sub-Freudian ( like the little man crawling into the woman's privates in Talk to Her. ) Even Luis Bunuel had moments where the rigor slackens and he seems to say, "Aw, I'll just wing it."

Well, the rigor never slackens in The Holy Girl. This film would make Maurice Pialat feel like he was wearing a neck brace. Lucrecia Martel makes so few concessions in her film-making that even the most advanced and cosmopolitan film buffs will be bewildered by the effort of comprehension they're faced with here ( as they always will be when confronted with the spiritual, by the way. ) Martel, to her credit, is completely immune to any trends in Spanish-language, not to say Argentinian film-making, and doesn't truckle to any stereotypes about hot-blooded Latins either. This film is as cold-blooded, analytical and lofty as they come. She has been compared to Claire Denis, but she's much more like the aforementioned Pialat, structuring her film in "blocks," so that each scene starts in media res, making us readjust and grapple for our bearings. From Cassavetes she has also learned a lot, especially the way every single shot is filled with peripheral, incidental characters who appear and disappear at random, but who contribute a steady stream of ambient chatter and small talk that Martel uses as white noise to bury the important dialogue. This sharpens the audience's attention and makes them search each and every frame for the aural and visual clues they'll need to penetrate the symbolic thicket.

I'll admit that my primal instinct is to gush unreservedly over such brazen world-cinema ambitions, but in this case, there was something missing, some sense of spontaneity or original flair. Is it that I've seen too many art-movies that construct a pasteboard purgatory and try to make the audience and the filmmaker complicit in a feeling of superiority over and above the struggling souls depicted? There's a rush of symbols in this film -- the Theremin, the theatrical presentation, the temperature-controlled pool, the spritzes of air freshener, and many more -- that point to Martel's concern with the way people fake their own lives, or what they consider to be pleasures. But, perhaps due to the late date of 2005, 40-odd years on from the premiere of L'Avenntura at Cannes, this feels like a preestablished "theme" rather than an obsession. The jouissance-as-limbo framework, in fact, is really nothing at this date but shorthand for film festival quality that every self-respecting intellecto is supposed to automatically scratch their chins and snap their fingers about. And The Holy Girl is missing the distinctive personal feature that would put it over the top, whether it's the sky-high cringe factor of Dumont's 29 Palms, or the the male-gaze Lolita lust of Pialat's A Nos Amours. This film by contrast reminds me of certain dry-as-dust female professors I've had who pick over the corpse of To The Lighthouse but seem not to really be impassioned by it or anything else.

Then again, why am I insisting that a movie that's about passion has to be made with passion? I'm contradicting myself. Amalia, the titular holy girl, who we see masturbating and chasing after an older man, is not a real nymphet but actually much more like one of those female saints you read about who, racked with tumors, relish each moment of pain for the way it brings them closer to God. The catch is that, in this case, it's Amalia's puberty that serves as the tumor. What looks like the erotic raptures of a budding adolescent are actually paeans to God, who she sees as having sent her on a mission to save Dr. Janos from himself -- she conflates this feeling of the religious "purpose-driven life" with her own pubertal longings. But Martel makes sure to render her unclassifiable, immune from definitions, from psychology, even from humanity. She is, simply put, a non-sexual being ( I was about to say "defiantly non-sexual being" but she doesn't need to defy anyone, she is passively what she is, a glimmer of truth in a hive of fear and desperation. ) If Amalia directed this movie, it would be with exactly the same kind of disorienting, intensely-focused calm punctuated by fleeting mystical signs -- a testament to Martel's success, despite my reservations.

Trusts the Viewer!

[paterfam001 · 10/10 · 7 October 2005]

It is very rare that a movie trusts a viewer to draw his own conclusions about the characters and events in a movie. The ones that do, if they're any good at all, are among the best of their kind. This movie presents its characters as we would meet them in life, without the manipulative cues that normally clue you in on how you are supposed to feel (musical score, camera angles, establishing shots). You are not even sure at first who the main characters are; you have to - God help you - work at discovering what is going on. The theme of the movie is unfamiliar: it is about the weird symbiosis between sexuality and religious passion that is manifest in the title character. The film's characters are unglamorous, their motives obscure, the setting of the movie is mundane, the incidents of the plot are unsensational, the pace is slow and the ending is ambiguous. Sounds like fun, right? The odd thing is that it is continuously absorbing. It is the most life-like movie I have seen for years.

A glorious account of contradictions and struggles with presumed truths

[peteduhon · 10/10 · 6 January 2006]

Beer is not needed for this movie but rather awareness. Awareness for the sublime and an understanding of subtle expressions of art. The director, Lucrecia Martel, captures the plight of a young girl's unfortunate lost of innocence elegantly. La Nina Santa, also involves two best friends and their dealings with the opposite sex and religion. One of the girls deals with someone of her own age and the other girl deals with someone old enough to be her father. Interestingly, the older gentlemen(smile) who is must come to terms with dealing with a younger girl also must face the fact that the girl's mother takes a liking to him.

There is a minimalist and mystic approach to this film, in other words, do not expect easy answers or easy solutions but rather you are looking out of a window and gazing at a situation that involves people and their belief systems.

old fashioned symbolism

[jhmb2003 · 3/10 · 4 August 2006]

It's really hard to enjoy a movie in which nine out of ten characters speak so softly, whispering and grumbling without any sense. I cannot be engaged in a story built exclusively with environmental and symbolic elements and no suspense at all. I do not want to listen anything about the same old debate concerning catholic education and sexual repression (may be 20 or 30 years ago). I suspect this movie is out of season and out of Martel's range. The '60 and '70 were really good but I am not interested in remakes. Despite the above listed complains, I think Martel is talented but may be she still has to find her own voice. I liked "La Ciénaga", the other Lucrecia Martel's effort. It was less pretentious and more entertaining. In summary: this is a boring, pointless, old-fashioned film. I have watched this kind of story before, better written and executed by many directors, v.g.: Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura and Peter Weir (Please take a look at "Picnic at the hanging rocks") only to name three of them. All in all it deserves a 3/10.