Guy Lodge Film Critic Whatever summer temperature it is where the average person’s mind begins to warp and melt in the general heat-haze, “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake” is set permanently to that exact degree.
You can feel the slow, sweaty adhesion of skin to every surface — or simply to itself — in Argentine director Laura Casabé‘s unusual, genre-fusing debut feature: a would-be summer romance that is repeatedly shaken from its languid, lovestruck daze by stark, uncanny surges of violence.
Both a “Carrie”-esque tale of teenage urges so intense they swell into destructive chaos and a snapshot of a mismanaged country reaching a breaking point of public unrest, “Quarry Lake” bears the smart, politically conscious stamp of screenwriter Benjamin Naishtat (the celebrated director of “Rojo” amd “Puan”), though Casabé brings a distinct female gaze to the material.
Quietly frightening in its study of civility being set aside either for reasons of selfish desire or collective rebellion, and touched with a magical realism that doesn’t work in expected ways, “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake” qualifies as a horror film of sorts, though it may disappoint any viewers seeking more straightforwardly visceral genre thrills.
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