The sordid details of the lives of middle class bourgeoisie can be seen as melodrama. But as in all Martel's films there is always a it's-barely-there-but-there satire. I can't really think of any director working today who works on Martel's level.

| Jan 22, 2025

In one of her best works on the big screen, Mercedes Morán's beautiful maturity and sensuality support this very solid cast... [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 28, 2023

There's an intimacy and intensity between them that is both platonic and slyly sexual...

| Feb 2, 2022

With this well executed drama, a follow-up to her La Cienega, Lucrecia Martel emerges as a major Argentinean filmmaker.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 28, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2006

The film's power comes from Amalia, and from Martel's vivid atmosphere.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 26, 2006

Some of The Holy Girl is hard to follow, but the reward is Martel's ability to create a spiritual yet subtly lecherous mood.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 27, 2005

Martel's distinctive and fascinatingly innovative style warrants her being considered as an auteur.

| Original Score: A | Sep 22, 2005

...at once humane, encompassing every shade of gray, and bracingly cold-eyed in its assessment of human endeavor.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 8, 2005

Obviously, this one is not for all tastes, but it is an impressive showing for Argentine filmmaker Martel, who's managed to do Almodovar-type material every bit as well as her mentor.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 8, 2005

Director Lucrecia Martel's storytelling is spare to the point of being stingy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 7, 2005

what should have been a religious experience comes off more like a botched coming-of-age tale with some pungent atmospherics.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 25, 2005

Martel's style is tentative, elusive, so much so that even the most conventional episodes benefit from her fresh perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 24, 2005

Provokes a wealth of unsettling thought, even as it declines to pass any final judgments of its own.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 23, 2005

Alche's crooked grin is as gleeful as the nose-wriggling enchantress in Bewitched. The elliptically implicit ending reminds me of Purple Noon minus the murder.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 22, 2005

A very intelligent movie marked by candor and compassion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 18, 2005

Ultimately turns out to be something of a bore, a film that, like one of its main characters, wanders around touching on subjects and then fleeing before connecting fully.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jun 17, 2005

A series of fractured tales that never resolve, never explain anything, and never get any more interesting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2005

The subtly sinister atmosphere is certainly striking...but the story is so fragmentary and allusive that trying to make much sense of it is rather like grasping at smoke.

| Original Score: C | Jun 17, 2005

A uniquely intriguing motion picture.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 17, 2005