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The Holy Girl

La niña santa

Argentina, Netherlands, Italy, Spain

2004

106 Min
Color
1.85:1
Spanish
  • Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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DIR Lucrecia Martel

EXEC Pedro Almodóvar, Esther García

PROD Lita Stantic

SCR Lucrecia Martel, Juan Pablo Domenech

DP Félix Monti

CAST María Alche, Mercedes Morán, Carlos Belloso, Julieta Zylberberg, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Mía Maestro, Marta Lubos, Arturo Goetz, Alejo Mango, Mónica Villa, Leandro Stivelman

ED Santiago Ricci

MUSIC Andres Gerszenzon

SOUND Guido Berenblum, Marcos De Aguirre, David Miranda, Victor Alejandro Tendler

Cannes (In Competition), New York, Toronto, London, Locarno, São Paulo: Critics Award - Honorable Mention, Rotterdam (Sturm und Drang), Karlovy Vary (Horizons), San Francisco

Synopsis

ENT physicians gather at a provincial hotel in Salta. The hotel owner, Helena, is subdued, brittle, avoiding the calls of her ex-husband’s pregnant wife. Family dysfunction seems everywhere. Helena’s daughter, Amalia, about 14, discusses vocations in a Catholic girls group. Their teen imaginations conflate the erotic, the religious, and the lurid. Amalia notices Dr. Jano, and he notices her. She decides to make him her vocation, she follows him, he rubs against her in a public crowd, he’s appalled at his actions. Meanwhile, Helena believes Jano is attracted to her even through he’s married. Longing, guilt, scandal, and teen sensuality are set to collide. —IMDb

Director

Original

Lucrecia Martel

Lucrecia Martel was born in Salta, northern Argentina, in 1966. As a teenager she did a good deal of filming of her large family, but she never suspected she would end up studying filmmaking. In 1986 she moved to Buenos Aires to study communication. She made a few short films, among them Rey Muerto (Dead King) which received several international awards.

Between 1995- 1998 she directed documentaries for television and children’s programs with a dark sense of humor and which were widely acclaimed by the Argentine press. In 1999 she received the Sundance+-/ NHK Filmmakers Award for her script La Cienaga (The Swamp) about families in Northern Argentina. —Filmbug

Interview with Lucrecia Martel 

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killingtime

3Mar13

A cure for my insomnia :P. But I love its theme and final scene.

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Starshine

27Jan13

deludente.

Ale/M likes this

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biganeh

28Aug12

I've been charmed by The Holy Girl since I watched it

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wendy and lucy

24Jul12

this lucrecia martel woman is so brainy.this is just perfect.

chanandre and You're Not Real, Girl like this

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Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
W184

The Auteurs Daily: Three Husbands and One Headless Woman

By David Hudson on August 19, 2009

"Like my other films, The Headless Woman doesn't end in the moment that the lights go up, it ends one or two days later," Lucrecia Martel

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Reviews

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Oh, You Bad Girl

By Glemaud on January 4, 2010

After the first act I was ready to write this off as a film to grand in scope to ever be concise and worthwhile. However, it wasn’t frustrating enough to turn off, so I powered through. Once I let…  read review

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Let's Discuss Martel's The Holy Girl

10 posts by 4 people about 3 years ago