General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Holy Girl

The Holy Girl (Spanish: La niña santa) is a 2004 Argentine coming-of-age psychological drama film directed by Lucrecia Martel, her second feature after La ciénaga (2001). Set during winter in the northern Argentine town of La Ciénaga, it follows Amalia, a devout sixteen-year-old who interprets being groped by a doctor at a medical conference as a divine calling to save the man from sin.¹ The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and was later named by the British Film Institute's magazine Sight and Sound among the thirty key films of the first decade of the century.²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Lucrecia Martel, co-writer Juan Pablo Domenech¹^•³
Production	2004; Argentina, Italy, Netherlands, Spain; 106 minutes; Spanish language²
Producers	Lita Stantic, Álvaro Urtizberea, Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, Esther García (El Deseo)⁴
Cannes	In Competition, 2004; Palme d'Or nomination, Martel's second feature so nominated¹^•⁵
Principal cast	María Alché (Amalia), Mercedes Morán (Helena), Carlos Belloso (Dr. Jano), Julieta Zylberberg (Josefina), Alejandro Urdapilleta¹
Critical reception	Metacritic Metascore 77 of 100 from 22 critics, "generally favorable"⁶
Argentine release	6 May 2004⁷

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The story is set in winter in La Ciénaga, a town in northern Argentina. After choir rehearsals, Amalia and her friend Josefina, both sixteen, meet in the parish church to discuss faith and vocation, whispering secretly about kissing between discussions. Josefina comes from a conservative provincial family. Amalia lives in the run-down Hotel Termas, owned by her family, with her divorced mother Helena and the rest of the family.¹

During a medical conference held at the hotel, a man sexually approaches Amalia on the street; she later discovers he is Dr. Jano, one of the doctors staying there, a respected provincial otolaryngologist who also begins a cautious flirtation with Helena.⁴^•⁸ Taking her Catholic lessons literally, Amalia decides it is her vocation to save the doctor from sin, and keeps the encounter secret. A love triangle and a series of misunderstandings draw the characters' lives together until everything erupts.⁴ The Harvard Film Archive describes the film as "a potent mix of Catholicism, mysticism and eroticism" in which divine vocation mixes with adolescent sexual awakening.⁹

Martel has said she did not want to present Amalia as a victim. "Poser une personne en victime, c'est la placer durablement dans une position de grande faiblesse," she told Le Monde, adding that she does not place all sexual violence on the same plane and that abuses must be denounced.¹⁰

Production

Martel began shooting the film in June 2003 in Rosario de la Frontera, 180 kilometers south of the capital of Salta province, her home region.¹¹ The production paired the veteran Argentine producer Lita Stantic, who also produced La ciénaga, with Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar's Spanish company El Deseo; Martel later said the producers never interfered with her artistic vision.⁴^•⁷ In May 2003, before completion, HBO Films London acquired international sales rights from El Deseo, its first pick-up.¹²

The crew included cinematographer Félix Monti, production designer Graciela Oderigo, editor Santiago Ricci, and composer Andrés Gerszenzon.¹ The film was made on a budget of about $1.4 million.¹³

Sound, touch, and style

Perception, especially hearing, drives the film. The Harvard Film Archive notes that La niña santa "revolves around the perception of the senses, touching, feeling, smelling, and especially hearing," questioning the primacy of the visual.⁹ The theremin, an electronic instrument played without being touched and long associated with classic American horror films, becomes the film's loaded symbol for proper and improper touching, joining the illicit, the uncanny, and the supernatural.⁹ Critics have singled out the soundtrack: Télérama called the soundtrack "a cardiac partition, an organic, deafening lament," and the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter read the film as a meditation on the disconnect between what is said and what is heard, asking whether a sound is the voice of God or random noise.¹⁴^•¹⁵

Scholarship situates the film within the New Argentine Cinema that emerged in the mid-1990s, reading it as a cinematic critique of perception that stages the conflict between desire and belief, mysticism and sexuality, while blocking moralizing or allegorical interpretation.¹⁶ Deborah Martin, author of a book chapter on the film, argues that it scrutinizes the ideological conditions established by Catholicism and their close relationship with constructions of femininity, and that through the female adolescent as agent of her own desire it suggests resistance to the social roles into which she is summoned.¹⁷

Reception

At Cannes the film was reviewed as a confirmation of Martel's talent; Libération's Antoine de Baecque wrote that with her second film Martel deepened the universe first seen in La ciénaga, and Cahiers du Cinéma judged that she passed the "trial by fire" of the second film with ease.¹⁴ On Metacritic the film scores 77 out of 100 from 22 critics, categorized as generally favorable; Variety gave it 100, and The New York Times' review (by A. O. Scott) called it "elusive, feverish and altogether amazing."⁶ The film won Clarín Awards for Best Director (Martel) and Best New Film Actress (Julieta Zylberberg) in 2004, and an honorable mention Critics Award at the São Paulo International Film Festival.

The film's reputation has grown with time. Its inclusion in Sight and Sound's thirty key films of the first decade marks its canonical standing,² and the Slovenian director Urška Djukić cited it as an inspiration for her 2025 film Little Trouble Girls. It remains the middle panel of Martel's Salta trilogy, between La ciénaga (2001) and La mujer sin cabeza (The Headless Woman, 2008), all filmed in the region around Salta.¹⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026