The Holy Girl

A teenage girl confuses her sexual awakening with the calling from God she has been eagerly awaiting.

Devout Catholic teenager Amalia is eager to receive God’s calling for her.

While standing in a crowd watching a street performer, Amalia feels a strange man behind her inappropriately pressing himself against her body. In the swirling aftermath, Amalia’s sudden cognisance of both her sexual vulnerability and power becomes impossibly intertwined with her interpretation of this moment as a sign from God. She decides then and there that it’s her mission to save this stranger’s soul, which becomes further complicated when he checks in to the hotel that her mother owns and operates.

Curator’s Note

The second installment of what’s now known as Lucrecia Martel’s Salta trilogy (bookended by La Ciénaga and The Headless Woman), The Holy Girl offers the greatest use of narrative and coincidence of the three titles but shares the same dark, almost Buñuelian tiptoe toward and around disaster.

The Holy Girl marks Martel’s first collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar who executive produced this and her subsequent features. Perhaps buoyed by Almodóvar’s attachment, and certainly by the critical success of La Ciénaga, the film enjoyed elevated status on the festival circuit, marking its international premiere at the 57th Cannes Film Festival where it screened in competition.