The Holy Girl

Lucrecia Martel's pseudo-religious Argentinian drama seems in some ways to be a small miracle. With an almost Bressonian sense of casting and a slightly off-kilter sense of image framing, she unfolds her story of a 14-year-old girls sexual awakening (without any actual sex) intertwined with her Catholic ferver. She lives in a hotel owned by her mother. The hotel is hosting a medical convention. One afternoon she joins a crowd in watching live music, one of the doctor's stands uncomfortably close behind her, close enough to make pelvic contact for a few moments before scurrying off. After this encounter, she devotes herself to saving his soul. Maria Alche, who plays the girl, has a beautiful inscrutability about her, as does Martel's narrative. At times it is subtle and understated to a fault, one can quickly begins to lose focus of what's going on. Yet her visual sense and the mood she creates actually manage to carry the film whether you're following it or not. Jim Hoberman says that it is "characterized by agnostic irony," which is probably true, yet it still feels like a minor miracle.