Review of The Holy Girl (2004) by William D — 30 Nov 2009

"The Holy Girl" is one of the most boring films I've ever seen. Set in a hotel during a doctors' conference, it chronicles myriad banalities such as people having lunch together silently. Then we watch maids doing laundry. Then the children of hotel employees take religion classes together. Then teenage girls wash their hair, etc. One banal sequence after another.

One girl who lives at the hotel starts to have feelings of longing for one of the doctors at the conference after he touches her in a provocative way one day. She starts following him around the hotel, and he tries to avoid her. The girl's mother also develops a mild crush on this doctor, which is hard to understand because he barely ever speaks or does anything interesting. Almost no one says anything interesting. There is practically no script at all.

I cannot understand what writer/director Lucrecia Martel thought was so interesting about all these banalities. Her most recent film, "The Headless Woman," was vastly more interesting. By contrast, "The Holy Girl" has almost no content whatsoever. This is a must-avoid.