CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

writerasfilmcritic A number of reviewers seemed to be blown away by this movie. I didn't find it particularly "brilliant," nor for that matter, very engaging. A middle-aged physician at a medical conference (away from his wife and family) begins a painfully halting flirtation with an attractive divorcée. Yet later, in a crowd scene, he grinds up against a nubile adolescent who turns out to be her daughter. This peculiar set of circumstances can't go anywhere good and sure enough, it doesn't. That in itself seems to provoke interest for some, but the pace is so slow that you get tired of waiting for things to gel and something significant to occur. As a result, most of the film felt unconnected and vaguely irrelevant. In fact, entire scenes could have been cut without affecting the story very much. In the last half hour, matters finally begin to coalesce, but other than an ironic set of tension-producing coincidences at the conclusion, there is really nothing new or unexpected here. In fact, it becomes disappointingly predictable, as if torn from the news. The biggest problem with having pretty Maria Alche' in the lead role is that she looks much older than the script indicates (she was 21 when the film was released) and is obviously not an innocent. It diminishes the sense of immorality(and probable illegality) surrounding the sexual advance made upon her by the physician when that sense is central to the premise and the concluding events.

ncberman Looking at some of the other user comments, I realize that many sought to extol the purported virtues of this film, professing Lucrecia Martel's artistic brilliance and method for capturing personality and conflict as demonstrated in this, her "ouevre," but as far as I'm concerned, these people must be blind, if not also deranged. This movie is abysmal. It's inert, without direction and a true chore to finish. The first hour and a quarter scarcely set the stage, with the duration moving no quicker or more palatably, and I'm more than patient with artistic efforts that appear to want for plot, but this was pointlessly plot less and otherwise utterly bereft of potentially other redeeming features. The bulk of the acting is mediocre to average, Martel's writing without flair or innovation, and the camera work and editing pretty much boring. Why Almodovar was willing to put his name on this work (and I'm convinced that it was his name and no more, based on the wretchedly lobotomizing slowness of the story, bloviating banality and clear absence of captivating content) is beyond me. And I would like to clarify that this dreadful film school fare should not even be included in the same paragraph, let alone be the subject of any direct comparison (unless it is a profoundly disparate one) to any of the following: Amores Perros or any of Inarritu's work, any actually-Almodovar-created work, the Cuaron Bro.s' Y Tu Mama, Salles' Motorcycle Diaries or Central Station, Meirelles' City of God or even the pretty but anticlimactic Carrera's Crimen del Padre Amaro. And I actually think that the scene settings, character list and cast had real possibility and promise: Mia Maestro (as the young Catholic teacher leading and incessantly lecturing the group of girls in choir practice in sanctimonious catechism-worthy restraint and denial of any sensation or sexual awakening, whom Amalia's friend Jose(fina) claims to have seen making out with a clandestine lover) is pretentiously chaste and overtly uptight but so comely and foreseeably coquettish that I would killed to have seen her character more developed or perhaps the explicit aforementioned trysts; María Alché is sufficiently intriguing, complex and coy that far more could have been done with her, apart from the dilapidated swimming pool and sneaking up on the tragically-boring Carlos Belloso/Dr. Jano; and, well, that's about it. Oh, I almost forgot, I will give Martel this: speaking from the somewhat limited experience as the son of a pathologist and a nurse, Martel DOES manage to capture how deliriously boring and maimingly monotonous a medical convention can be (otorhinolaryngologists no less, their motto would rightly be "fun with phlegm"), particularly when held in a craphole motel (think Leaving Las Vegas' witty "The Whole Year Inn"-cum-"The Hole You're In") and further exacerbated by a tediously planned dramatization of how to conduct a patient interview (a device Martel must have found brilliant since she devotes exponentially more time to this than anything else). Please, if you take nothing else away from my admitted logorrhea, synthesize this: this movie is awful, Martel likely a hack worthy of condemnation rather than scatologicaly-founded praise, and above all else, I implore you, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME!

Howard Schumann The combination of budding adolescent sexuality and Catholic Sunday School sermonizing leads to confusion and trouble in Lucrecia Martel's remarkable second film The Holy Girl. Similar in style to Alain Cavalier's masterful Thérése, another film about religious fervor, The Holy Girl is an extremely intimate series of minimalist vignettes in which the story unfolds in glimpses and whispered conversations, in "a slow reverie of quick moments". As in Thérése, there is no approval or disapproval of behavior, only a snapshot of events that the viewer is left to interpret -- and it can be a challenge.Set in La Salta, the same small Northern Argentine town as Martel's first feature La Ciénaga, the film takes place at a run down hotel that is hosting a medical convention of ear, nose, and throat doctors. The scene is a constant flux of people and movement and it is difficult at first to sort out the characters. Amalia (Maria Alché) is the sixteen-year old daughter of the hotel's manager Helena (Mercedes Moran) who is recently divorced and lives with her brother Freddy (Alejandro Urdapilleta). Helena suffers from an inner ear problem that is reflected in a discordant ringing noise that affects her relationship with the world around her.As the film opens, Inés (Mia Maestro), a young Catholic teacher leads a group of girls in choir practice. "What is it, Lord, you want of me?" she sings. Overcome with emotion, tears well up in her eyes but Amalia and her friend Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg) merely whisper to each other about the teacher's alleged love affairs. The talk in class is about the student's "mission" and how they can recognize the signs that point to God's calling. Amalia thinks she sees a sign when a doctor attending the conference, Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso) goes in for some sexual touching while she stands in a group listening to a performance on the Theremin, an instrument that is not touched, but is played by disturbing the surrounding air (perhaps the way adults ought to deal with adolescents).The character's motivations are complex and defy easy categorizing. Jano is a family man with children but seems driven by sexual longings. Helena, still seething that her ex-husband has just fathered twins by his new wife, is attracted to Jano but her advances are not reciprocated and her relationship with Freddy has a hint of more than brotherly love. Josefina teases her young cousin but holds back from committing herself, yet fully engages in kissing with Amalia, though what it means to them is uncertain. Amalia thinks that her mission is to save Dr. Jano and seductively follows him around the hotel, even entering his room when he is not there. At first not relating Amalia's stalking to the incident in the crowd, Jano becomes fearful that his medical career will be jeopardized when he discovers her identity, but the die is cast and Amalia's casual relating the incident to Josefina leads to unintended results.The Holy Girl is elusive and somewhat disorienting, yet it remains an extraordinary achievement, full of intensity and crackling tension, true to the way people act when they are dealing with feelings bubbling beneath the surface. The girls live in their own little world, oblivious to the havoc they have unleashed and it is Martel's brilliant direction that allows us to enter that world, and it is not always comfortable. What happens in the film may be inappropriate but it never seems perverse. We expect the characters to be either heroes or villains but Martel sees them only as flawed human beings. Like the knowing half-smile etched on Amalia's face, her universe is imbued with a mystery that simply observes rather than evaluates. If the ending does not provide us with immediate gratification, it may be because it respects that mystery.

noralee "The Holy Girl (La Niña santa)" effectively captures the obsessive, all-consuming passions of adolescent girls, like an Argentinian "Thirteen" suffused by Catholicism instead of California pop culture.Young teens are shown exploring their faith as equally as their bodies and the new found power of their sexuality, as a religious instructor, Mía Maestro of TV's "Alias" protectively, and finally impatiently, tries to channel their avidity into becoming a nun.But one of the girls comes into contact with the panoply of the perfidy of adults in an intriguing situation, as part of the family of resident managers of a resort hotel. The film focuses on the week when a medical convention brings partying doctors into her and her mother's sights.Writer/director Lucrecia Martel adds an interesting element, recalling but much less brutally than "Blue Car" and "Fat Girl (a ma soeur)," when an older abuser crosses paths with the curious adolescent. Ironically, here he is a nondescript, middle-aged husband and father but he gets off on anonymous rubbing up in crowds (which is eerily accompanied by a street musician playing the spooky-sounding theremin), that she confuses for more direct attention into what she transfers as her religious "mission" (at least that's how it's translated).The parallel story with the flirtatious mother is less convincing, even with some sort of jealous motivation because her ex's young trophy wife is now pregnant and her boredom with some sort of ongoing, casual relationship she has with another hotel employee.The film ends on an oddly sympathetic note for the fetishist as his needed anonymity is gradually lost over the course of the week, with a negative view of the teenage girls as they manipulatively deflect adult notice from their experiments.The English subtitles are very awkwardly translated. Some of the English words have a disjointed connotation and are downright confusing.The cinematography is very lush and warm, reflecting the girls' overheated emotions.