by Nick Taylor
Few working directors are as exciting as Argentianian genius Lucrecia Martel. To talk about her work means to talk about her bold experiments with lensing and editing, her immaculately controlled sound design, her unusual risks with structure and dense layering of themes in her screenplays, all capped off with a very particular sense of humor. Martel’s films don’t immediately spring to mind as performance venues, but one of the many (many) things I love among her small but indomitable filmography is her ability to coax tonally compelling characterizations from her actors, rather than overwhelming them under the weight of her own directorial idiosyncrasies. Daniel Giménez Cacho is able to find a million minute gradations of wounded pride, misplaced vanity, and diminished hope in Zama, keying to Martel’s riskiest wavelength by resourcefully flexing a very deadpan poker face. The many women running around La Ciénaga are charged with their own peculiar energies that combine and differentiate from each other in endlessly fascinating ways.
Mercedes Morán, a high point in the latter film, returns for The Holy Girl in one of its main roles, and she not only delivers the best performance in the film but sets a high bar for what an actor can do in Martel’s canon...
The Holy Girl largely centers on three characters. Amalia (María Alche) is a Catholic school student whose sexuality is maturing in tandem with a genuine religious fervor. Her latest classes revolve around discovering one’s vocation before God, an epiphany that converges with her sexual curiosities after a stranger rubs himself against her in a crowd while she’s watching a theremin player. Amalia decides her vocation will be to give salvation to this man, in whatever way that may be. He is Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso), one of several hundred doctors attending a medical conference being held at a La Cienaga hotel. Married with a few kids, Dr. Jano starts regularly conversing with the hotel’s owner, an attractive woman whose brother was friends with him in medical school. Their relationship evolves as the conference goes on, though Dr. Jano grows increasingly troubled by his near-adultery and by his molestations of Amalia, especially as he keeps running into her in the hotel. The hotel’s owner is named Helena (Mercedes Morán), a busy woman trying to manage what lately seems like a very unrewarding job. Helena also keeps finding herself dealing with some pressing family issues, like having to talk her brother through his melancholies, fending off phone calls from her ex-husband’s new wife, and trying to get a grip on her daughter Amalia’s newfound commitment to God.
This setup might conjure up a certain kind of supporting parental archetype in teen-centered dramas, where the mom’s personal life and responsibilities mostly feel like the character is treading water until she inevitably discovers whatever her child has been up to. Martel avoids the lazy moralizations implicit in these roles but also devises a much fresher character for Moran to play. Helena’s story is given as much attention as Amalia’s, rather than being framed as a conceit for why she hasn’t Noticed Things yet - though what exactly is happening between her daughter and Dr. Jano is much harder to pin down than you’d guess. She’s not a curio on the film’s edges but a full protagonist guiding the events of The Holy Girl.
As one might imagine, Helena’s internal debates and questionable decision-making don’t invite the same sort of ideological heaviness or stylistic rigour as Amalia’s spiritual journey or Dr. Jano’s roiling guilt. Some of the most sensory filmmaking techniques Martel uses to help guide us through Amalia’s point of view are stripped away for Helena. The sharp editing and framing remain, but it’s hard to imagine her dilemmas being presented more directly than they are. Part of what makes Morán’s performance so intriguing is that she doesn’t try to gratuitously raise the temperature of her scenes in order to match the film’s other energies, staying on a pretty relaxed wavelength that’s as charismatic as the more provocative charges of Alche and Belloso. Much like her work in La Ciénaga, Morán is able to hold a piquant, understated tone that blends in unique ways with her co-stars while retaining its own color.
She’s also a uniquely responsive screen partner, connecting with the other actors while still looking slightly lost in her own head, doing so without coming across as removed from the scene itself. Morán achieves this balancing act by making Helena an intellectually active presence. She foregrounds Helena’s competence, showing how considerately this woman thinks about what she’s seeing and hearing before properly responding. Even when she sticks her foot in her mouth or asks an odd question, her missteps read as an unexpected error rather than her usual way of being. Yeah, she gushed to a doctor about his upcoming lecture only to realize she was talking about someone else entirely, but we’ve all been there. And yet, there’s an opacity at the center of Morán’s characterization that keeps us from fully grasping what she’s taking away from these encounters, or the thought processes leading her to respond the way she does. It’s a generous interpretation of the part as written, making Helena’s motivations more enigmatic than they might’ve been in the face of decision making she seems to recognize on some level as being questionable or petty. Maybe the short-term nature of the conference is what gives her the confidence to strike such a charged relationship with a married man, but she refuses to indicate what drew her to him in the first place, or why she’s trying even harder after his family life suddenly becomes more important.
Morán’s approach is also able to suggest an accumulated sense of anxiety from multiple sources without ever escalating into big displays of emotion. We get the sense early on that Helena is accustomed to a certain amount of stress at her job, though all of that on top of Amalia’s new, somewhat unsettling level of religious devotion and Dr. Jano’s messiness might be a new level for her. So often when she’s annoyed Helena tends to stiffen her posture and stop moving, as if the sheer force of her irritation is freezing her in place. A scene of Helena complaining in the kitchens about Dr. Jano’s suddenly withdrawn behavior is funnier and more interesting because of her total stillness while she’s voicing these thoughts, seemingly to no specific person, while her staff shuffles around her to prepare tonight’s meal. The only response she gets is from her sourest, most judgmental employee, who theorizes Dr. Jano is probably just feeling guilty about what he’s doing to his family because he’s not an inconsiderate bastard. Helena gets the message, and Morán articulates her own contempt well enough just by shifting her weight and speaking a little harsher. She knows full well what she's doing and doesn't need any lip about it, thanks.
So what do you think Helena will do once her relationship with Dr. Jano - already encompassing angles neither romantic nor sexual but suffused with potential for both of those elements - suddenly seems thwarted before it could really start? How might her views of him change once she learns about his encounters with her own daughter, an even more nebulous relationship whose contours will look utterly different based on who tells her? Martel answers some but not all of the questions The Holy Girl is seemingly heading towards confronting, and Morán follows suit. Ending her performance in a moment of nervous, animated anticipation, her Helena is a testament to carefully sustained mood and steadily accrued tensions without the ultimate goal of planting the seeds for a fifth-act outburst after Learning What’s Up. Morán unfussily evokes the headspace of a normal woman while still preserving her mysteries. To do this in any film is already an impressive endeavor, and to pull it off while operating in an aesthetic as highwire as this, in full synchronization with her director, is an achievement all its own all its own.
previously on a 2005 supporting actress alternate ballot:
Taraji P Henson, Hustle & Flow