La niña santa - Das heilige Mädchen

More admirable than attractive is Lucrecia Martel's "The Holy Girl" – even at this time I am feeling a steady amount of ambivalence toward this maddeningly beautiful film. Is this kind of paradoxical relationship even possible? Even the proverbial sinner in his love/hate toward expiation seems dubious.

The film follows Amalia and her friend Josefina's exploits as they navigate their way through a summer of adolescence. Sanctimonious doesn't even begin to describe them – indeed, Amalia is wanting to screw a man she's trying to "save" while Josefina regards her Catholic school teacher with disdain due to the good teacher's sexual adventures even though Josefina herself takes it up the arse from her horny boyfriend. This shopworn irony regarding the duality and dialectical impulses in hormonal, affectedly pious people grows wearisome on the attention span.

Okay, but I used the adjective "beautiful" earlier. And it most certainly is from a logistical standpoint. The DP composed seemingly interminable, achingly gorgeous shots of the action. He had no qualms about not using deep-focus photography (in which everything in the frame is in focus). This style harks back to the old American B&W's in which they were not afraid to focus on only one piece of the frame while leaving the rest in a blurry discombobulation. A power erupts from the screen the more pronounced these shots are. However, it must be said, the steady frequency of all this becomes stultifying to an annoying degree – like chocolate in endless supply, it becomes too much of a good thing.

This cloying film would have been great if it didn't try so hard to be a great film. Art house flicks mostly subscribe to an overly snobby and abundantly complex ideological schema. Is a show-off praiseworthy? Not in this case.

I lack words to express how impressed I was with Argentina's "La Niña Santa". It's easily of one of the best South American films in recent history, along with "City of God" and "Amores Perros".

The film follows a very simple plot: an attractive single mother lives in a hotel with her teenage daughter, and they are currently having many guests over for a science committee. Among the guests is Doctor Jano, a reserved and mysterious middle-aged man.

The film then proceeds to analyze and dissect the relationship between the three in an incredibly haunting and uncompromising manner. Seldom can a moviegoer be treated to such exquisite work in writing, cinematography and acting as with "La Niña Santa".

In addition to that, the relationship between the two teenage girls, Amalia and Josefina is one of the most realistic and beautiful portrays of adolescent life I have ever seen.

Simply the greatest film of 2004 and one of the best of this decade so far.

To enjoy "The Holy Girl," you have to watch it in a certain way. Watching for plot will leave you unsatisfied; I'd recommend watching for character instead. Lucrecia Martel attempts to use her impressive technique to nail down the psychology of her characters; this works especially well for her protagonist, Amalia. While freewheeling through the bush near the reputed site of a post-car crash miracle, a fade to silence fills the air with Amalia's desire for transcendence. (Martel's sound is expressive throughout, particularly a theremin solo as weirdly kinky as the scene it illustrates.)

The most interesting relationship is between Amalia and Jose. Shallow but not empty, they're attractive not because of their bone structure but because of their vitality - it shines through even when they're bored, which is most of the time. Their bond isn't as intense as Kate Winslet's and Melanie Lynskey's in "Heavenly Creatures," but it's the same sort of friendship (albeit not consummated), only things spin out of control in a less bloodstained way. Amalia and a mildly perverted doctor also have some amusing scenes, while the character of Amalia's mother fails to add any more than the predictable ironies.

The movie ends where it ends to avoid humiliating the characters any more than is strictly necessary; I like these endings where something is left to the viewers' imaginations, though obviously not everyone would agree. Some of Martel's social themes, like the way the middle class appropriates religion to serve itself, are lost along the way. "The Holy Girl" isn't as lovably wild as "Y tu mamá también," but on the topic of sexual hypocrisy, it's just as smart, and maybe funnier.

Lucrecia Martel, the director of "The Holy Girl" gives us an erotically charged account of a young woman's awakening to a world that she seems not to be ready for. Ms. Martel combines a mixture of religion and eroticism in the narrative of the film. As always, the director gathers an interesting cast to tell her story.

It's interesting to read some of the negative comments to this forum. Most perceive the film as boring and slow. In fact, the film is far from that, and it was surprising to see the movie the other day at the Lincoln Plaza complex with a theater half full and nobody walked out of the film, something that we have witnessed viewers to do with other, more acclaimed features.

Ms. Martel takes us to a remote spot in Northern Argentina, an improbable place for holding a medical convention. At the same time, the director, in an interview we read, tells about how the location, which she knew from having been as a guest, made an impression on her and she based her story at the hotel.

Amalia is a young girl that is just awakening to a sexuality that goes against her upbringing. We see her surrounded by her school mates and the loyal Josefina, her best friend. Ines, who seems older, leads the group in prayer, perhaps to get the young women's mind into their latent sexual awakenings. Amalia lives in the hotel with her mother, an attractive woman who seems to be oblivious to what's going on with her daughter. In fact, one gets the impression the mother enjoys whatever sex she gets to the fullest.

Enter the roguish Dr. Jano. He is on his own, attending the medical conference, although he is married and has about four children. When Dr. Jano goes into town he spots a group watching a street performance and immediately gravitates toward the beautiful young woman he sees as someone he can casually rub himself against the girl without attracting attention. Amalia realizes what's going on and starts following this enigmatic man, who proves to be elusive in the open. He is more of a voyeur rather than a man that would lead Amalia into an open sexual encounter. Everything is done in a subtle way, which in a way works better because of the shock it provokes on the viewer. In a way, Ms. Martel makes us voyeurs because through her camera, she makes us watch what Dr. Jano is doing to Amalia.

The acting Ms. Martel got from the principals is amazing. Maria Alche is a girl of great beauty. She is an intense young woman who fits perfectly in the story. The other good performance comes from Carlos Belloso. His Dr. Jano is an enigma as we watch him. In a way it shows this man as a duplicitous person who being married, will go and try to get his thrills in dark places, probably sitting next to unsuspecting young women in movies, or wherever he can be aroused without being obvious. Mia Maestro is Ines, the pious woman who is seen giving religious instruction to the girls. Julieta Zyberberg is good as Josefina and Mercedes Moran also has great moments as Helena.

This is a disturbing film, but one that dares to speak of things that other film makers avoid. Ms. Martel shows she is a director that doesn't mind taking chances.

Director and co-writer, Lucrecia Martel (Argentina, 1966), has certainly re-written the Lolita story. But this time, the older male finds a more complex younger female in his way. The world is small and certainly claustrophobic, mainly a hotel with mineral baths somewhere in the Santiago del Estero region in Argentina called Las Termas. Tourists come and go into this hotel where all employees form a kind of extended family. Amalia, played by María Alché,is a 15 year-old immersed in the study of catechism and sexual awakening. The great question becomes that of vocation, "what does God wishes me to do." Dr. Jano, played by Carlos Belloso, attends a professional medical conference at Las Termas and engages in improper sexual conduct in a public street of the small town. Once discovered by Amalia, his remorse grows as things become more and more entangled. Amalia and Dr. Jano engage in a mesmerizing game of hide and seek, of desire to redeem and fear of the consequences of losing anonymity.

La niña santa is a haunting film, beautifully shot and full of complex nuances as well as tension. It left me with a sense of "what happened here?" Regarding its director, Pedro Almodovar (one of the film's executive producers) as said that she knows is part of his list of favorite film directors. Perhaps he sees in Martel's work the subtleties that he himself lacks.