The Holy Girl

(La niña santa)

  • Introduction

    Ramsey McGlazer is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley and Senior Editor of Critical Times.

featuring

Mercedes Morán, Carlos Belloso, María Alché, Alejandro Urdapilleta,

“God sends us signs, that’s what matters,” notes a church choir teacher to her charges in Martel’s hallucinatory look at religious devotion and sexual awakening in small-town Argentina. The Holy Girl locks down its blend of Lolita obsessions and Catholic repressions with delirious visual and aural flair: the probing camera hovers barely inches away from the characters, seemingly guarding them from any potential sin, while the soundtrack echoes with a satanic litany of half-heard conversations, overlapping sounds, and odd industrial noises. “The Holy Girl is a film that defies categorization,” wrote A. O. Scott of the New York Times. “But I’m tempted to call it a miracle.”

Jason Sanders
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Lucrecia Martel
Cinematographer
  • Félix Monti
Language
  • Spanish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 106 mins
Source
  • Park Circus
Permission
  • Rei Pictures

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