Argentine writer-director Lucrecia Martel's follow-up to her bitterly satirical LA CIENAGA (2001) returns to the fetid intersection of family dynamics and religious fervor in this somnolent exploration of 16-year-old schoolgirl Amalia's (Maria Alche) unsettling sexual awakening. Amalia lives with her lonely, embittered mother, Helena (Mercedes Moran), in a family-owned hotel in provincial La Cienaga ("The Swamp"), modeled on Martel's hometown of Salta. Muffled in a cocoon of childish inexperience by her suffocating relationship with Helena, and primed by daily religion classes to expect that at any moment God may call her to an ennobling task, Amalia first encounters...
Released:
2004
Rated:
NR
Length:
106 mins