THE HOLY GIRL
(La niña santa)
2004, 106’
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Countries: Argentina, Italy, Netherlands, Spain
Distributor: Tedoroa Film
Language: o.v. Spanish with Italian subtitles
Amanda and Josefina attend a parish society and enjoy talking about faith and vocation with their peers. Josefina’s family comes from the provinces and is highly conservative; Amalia lives with relatives and her divorced mother, Helena, in the dilapidated Hotel Termas. One day Amalia meets Dr Jano, a middle-aged doctor who is visiting the city to attend a conference to be held in his family’s hotel.
Presented at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, the second full-length film by Lucrecia Martel confirmed the Argentine director’s original vision and distinctive talent. The strange and unsettled atmosphere of La ciénaga is also present in this second film, created by the complex tangle of identities, pasts, desires, expectations and secrets. Named by the British Film
Institute’s magazine, Sight and Sound, among the thirty key films of the first decade of the century.
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