Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

chaos-rampant As far as I'm concerned, the film is an outstanding achievement in cinematic narrative, I'm tentatively including it as one of the very best I have seen. A lot of viewers have complained about the slumbering, monotonous tone and the filmmaker's insistence to not explain her vague story, which capped off by the high-handed gesture of the ending—the only note off for me—can give the impression that this is another in a long list of 'artsy', fashionably minimal film festival fodder. Fair points, but consider something else.The story is fairly simple, a Catholic girl looks to save the soul of a middle- aged doctor.I'm not sure if Lolita was consciously the template, indeed the film differs in obvious ways—the doctor makes covert sexual advances, but he is a sincerely troubled man, and from her end the girl perceives these to be a sign from god that this man has strayed and needs saving. There is family dysfunction as background and a lot of religious talk on the divine plan. But there is something deeper Lolitaesque, more in a while.Okay so the basic means of expression are in Altman's mode of narrative drifting, but with the difference of a static camera and the drift carried through in the movement of bodies and sound. If you read up on what the filmmaker has to say, she reveals stumbling on to this in an interesting way, not via film school but intimate observations of family. She seems like an alert, curious mind who likes to observe, the basis of everything.The film begins in a shapeless, rumbling state, and only gradually establishes a few things; the place is a hotel, a doctors' convention is scheduled to take place, the man is married with kids, the girl's mother is divorced. It only begins to acquire shape when both the girl and her mother take an interest in the sullen man. Ordinary so far.Here's where it gets really cool.The notion is that there is a a sign which female intuition picks up, the sign kicks off a story of connection, but for obvious reasons the story cannot be consummated in the open, it has to be submerged, disguised for busy, prying eyes. (the hotel residents' as well as our own)But now look at all these different things going on. A man in the shop window who creates invisible sounds and draws a crowd enthralled at the mystery of his creation, the remote sounds of hunters' gunfire which alarm the girl in the woods to something horrible, the talk of an invisible godvoice, the mother's unexplained persistent earbuzz. Both the mother and the doctor have acted in plays (the doctor as a doctor!), and a doctor- patient re-enactment before an audience is proposed to the mother by the taciturn doctor. And the most revealing, another doctor is caught in mischief with a young girl, which foreshadows shame and public embarrassment.The core scene that perfectly encapsulates what this is all about, is when we discover how the man in the shop window has been producing his peculiar sounds—a theremin, calligraphic hands drawing from thin air the shape of sound, something out of nothing, which is a stunning metaphor for the urges that overtake us in life.So as characters move through the world, they draw illusory currents in the air which on the topmost level acquire dramatic shape that reveals soul. It is this that masterfully recalls Lolita and in a far deeper way than either of the two film adaptations—a story which is both the story and faintly reveals the haze of urges (sexual, spiritual) of hidden inner selves as they shift and shiver behind their acceptable roles in that story.Each of these things amazes. I was in awe of a few.Together, they suggest one of the brightest, most intelligent voices in film these days, one of perhaps only three working right now for me. What's keeping her back? For my taste, the unoriginal camera. She just hasn't yet discovered her own calligraphic eye that will set her apart, though I'm sure that is in her future. For all I know, she has found it in her next film.I wish her the best of luck. In the meantime, see this and contemplate on the rich tapestry she has woven.

rowmorg This is a difficult movie mainly because it attempts to reach for an elusive subject: the enormous power of women over men, in spite of their ostensibly inferior status.The story is so idiosyncratic that we have to believe it is drawn from the director's life, and it is told in an appropriately intense, hyper-naturalistic way.As the meaning of the film emerges, very slowly, like watching paint dry, we realise that one lapse into temptation by an elite surgeon could plunge him into public disgrace and destroy his family and his career. And yet, the object of his momentary lust, a 15 year-old, has no idea of his fate in the all-male medical masonry hanging in her grasp, while her mother flirts with him, equally unaware but for quite different reasons.The girl, Amalia, is receiving intensive Roman Catholic instruction, which is as peculiar and fanatical for Latin girls as any madrassah Islamic brainwashing is for boys. The instructor weeps while singing the canticles about Hell and Heaven, and impresses the girls that they will definitely have a religious vocation, and will recognise the signs. Amalia, however, has more belief in the work of her own fingers under the sheets.The superstitious cult fills the girls' heads with nonsense and Amalia seems to think at one point that she can console and even seduce her father figure. She may well be emotionally disturbed by the divorce of her parents, and the imminent birth of twins to her unknown stepmother.Her friend, meanwhile, is engaging in sordid anal copulation with her boyfriend, simply to keep him around, while believing she is retaining her virginity. That's the wicked work of religious morality.I'm not sure how much women like to see themselves depicted in this unglamorous light, so the picture may well not be a hit at the box office, where the purchasing decision is often theirs. Nor is the storytelling method consumer-friendly, showing no exteriors and building characters slowly and haphazardly.

Eye-on-the-pie-in-the-sky 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.

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.