La niña santa (Das heilige Mädchen)

The beautiful young woman sings a song fervently: about how she belongs to God. Suddenly a pause. She turns away, crying. Her pupils whisper, pass a picture round, chuckle. After a short pause, the woman regains her composure and continues singing. An enigmatic start to the film, but then LA NIÑA SANTA slowly unravels the circumstances: The girls are convent students; the heroine's parents run a run-down hotel with a swimming pool; a medical congress is being held there - and one of the doctors indulges in an unseemly touch. Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel's second film creates a world of astonishing plasticity from such narrative fragments, faces, gestures, sounds and unusually framed images. The barren hotel is transformed into a wonderland in which the contrast between the rationalism of doctors and the religiosity of girls does not reveal any evidence of the supernatural, but a higher sensuality - a heightened perception of the textures of life, desire and growing up. An enchanting and inspiring masterpiece. (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum.