The Holy Girl (Argentina, 2004)

Some of the best directors from Argentina, such as Lisandro Alonso and Carlos Sorin, are setting their films far from Buenos Aires and other large urban centers. Lucrecia Martel, with only two features helmed, has earned a prominent place among them. Her debut La Cienaga and The Holy Girl take place in the province of Salta, the latter in the town of Rosario de la Frontera. Martel builds her narrative out of brief sequences and, by eschewing establishing and transitional shots, she often disorients the viewer and focuses his/her attention.

Amalia, the titular character, is a teenage girl being raised in the same family-owned hotel where her mother Helena and uncle Freddy grew up. She'a member of a Catholic youth group that meets at the hotel. We witness a discussion on how to recognize when God makes a "calling", thus assigning a "mission". Amalia's best friend Josefina appears more interested in rumours that the seemingly devout group leader is having "premarital relations", which are highly discouraged. After the meeting, Amalia crosses the street to listen to a musician playing the theremin outside a music store. A man stands behind her and presses his groin against her buttocks. The stranger scuttles away when Amalia turns around. Amalia goes to her mother's room and lies next to her. She points to a pamphlet Helena holds and asks "Who is he?". Helena identifies the man as one of the doctors attending a medical conference at the hotel. Later on, Amalia tells Josefina:"I think I have a mission". She proceeds to track and spy on the perpetrator, now identified as Dr. Jano. She goes as far as placing herself immediately in front of Jano during a second theremin performance, with similar results.

Jano is no stranger to Helena and Freddy. He used to vacation at the hotel decades ago. He remembers when Helena gave diving exhibitions. "We used to call you Esther Williams", he tells her.Freddy, who's ambivalent about calling his estranged kids, actually attended medical school with Jano, before dropping out. Jano begins to show a great deal of interest in Helena, who keeps refusing to take calls from her ex-husband and his new wife. Jano approaches Helena while she sunbathes, follows her into the elevator, and convinces other colleagues that she is the ideal person to play the patient in a role-playing exercise being organized. Jano calls his wife and attempts to dissuade her from coming to Rosario de la Frontera with their kids, as planned. He fails, and eventually Jano learns the persistent teen is Helena's daughter. Josefina, who hypocritically meets her cousin for sex on their grandmother's bed, betrays Amalia's confidence and tells her parents everything. The situation threatens to turn into a scandal.

The Holy Girl becomes a compendium of missed or thwarted callings and misunderstood signals. In Martel's universe, beds take on great significance, not only places where people have sex and sleep, but meeting places where important events and meaningful exchanges transpire. The hotel, where medical conferences and group meetings take place, becomes an enclosed, neutral ground for a battle between science and religion. Inside Amalia's psyche, perhaps in ways Martel is unwilling to reveal with clarity, an uneasy and somewhat perplexing accomodation between sexual longings and divine aspirations.

Lucrecia Martel's filmography evidence a unique, personal vision. A rare thing. With The Holy Girl, she comes even closer to the full realization of that vision than she did in the admirable debut.