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In this film of crisp intelligence and abundant pleasure and surprise, Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel juxtaposes two incongruous situations: a medical conference at a hotel and a group of teenage girls studying Christianity. The link between the two is the encounter between one of the girls, Amalia (María Alché), and the 40ish doctor (Carlos Belloso) who discreetly rubs up against her from behind as they watch a street-corner theremin recital. Amalia becomes convinced that the theremin’s keening is God’s call and that her vocation has to do with saving the doctor or sacrificing herself to his lust. Meanwhile, the doctor struggles against his attraction to Amalia while becoming involved with her mother (Mercedes Morán). With her shallow-focus close shots, Martel creates an explosion of sensuous fragments not closed off or wrapped up by the narrative, details that splay all over the warm, well-lit space of the film to hook up with one another at odd angles. The visual style is perfectly matched to this convention of characters who become each other’s fixations. Alché, with her crooked smile and look of indifferent bafflement, is a marvel. In Spanish with English subtitles. (106 minutes)
BY CHRIS FUJIWARA
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