The Holy Girl

MOVIE #1,281 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 12.15.23 part of the LUCRECIA MARTEL Director Focus Martel’s second feature is another understated gem, seemingly both elusive and cutting, in-your-face and just out of reach. Exploring taboos of incest and pedophilia intertangled in a story about faith, the film somehow never feels outwardly salacious. Instead it exudes a realism as it tackles these ideas from a distant, non-judgmental view. The Holy Girl centers around a mother and her devout Catholic daughter living in a hotel in Argentina. Similar to the works of Claire Denis, we’re dropped into a world with little to no context. The audience is tasked with finding the footing as it pertains to the time and place and who’s who of the narrative. This might feel like work but the characters are so rich and her subtle camerawork is spectacular. Take these dueling shots of two characters catching a glimpse of one another, just expert framing…

The hotel setting is at once grimey and glowing with life in the transient, carefree way those spaces often are: a spot for frivolous, fleeting adventure of the traveler, and drab stasis for the family tasked with running it. The maids constantly disinfecting everything with aerosol spray dispensers is such a quiet but effective metaphor. This is a building where nothing will ever be fully clean, including our souls.

The ending is also extremely vague, open-ended to the point of feeling incomplete. But I found something beautiful there, in the mystery running parallel to the question of God and religion: forever unsolved but full of something, hopefully love but at the very least, a little peace of mind.

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The Holy Girl (Spanish: La niña santa) is a 2004 Argentine drama film directed by Lucrecia Martel. The film was executively produced by Pedro Almodóvar and features Mercedes Morán, María Alche, Carlos Belloso, Alejandro Urdapilleta, and Julieta Zylberberg. It was released on May 16, 2004 .