The Virgin of the Quarry Lake Film Review

The Virgin of the Quarry Lake utilizes a number of genres and tones to mixed results, but features a breakthrough central performance.

Regardless of the story at large, the film is anchored by a powerhouse performance by newcomer Dolores Oliverio at its center, and her presence helps tremendously whenever the movie begins to dry up.

While not overtly a horror film, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake most frequently feels like one whenever Natalia (Oliverio) finds something or someone that’s inconveniencing her. This stylistic infusion makes sense, since being a teenager (and a teenage girl, specifically) itself provides its own unique horrors. Living with her grandmother after being abandoned by her parents, Natalia gets through her days by going to the local internet cafe (the film takes place in 2001) and avoiding the occasional violence in the street outside the home. Thankfully the summer provides the opportunity to get to know Diego (Agustín Sosa), a burnout bad-boy.

But Natalia has to compete for Diego’s affections with Silvia (Fernanda Echeverría), an older and presumably cooler girl. This sets Natalia off on a journey to grow up as quickly as possible, and it’s where The Virgin of the Quarry Lake finally gains some energy. She goes to a club and tries cocaine. She visits a brothel. She starts wearing more revealing clothing, and goes skinny dipping at the titular quarry lake with her friends, Diego, and Silvia. She gets more confrontational with her grandmother’s boyfriend. Throughout it all, Oliverio projects a calm confidence and a youthful naivete as she dives headfirst into the unknown.

Casabé uses a recurring visual motif of blood throughout the film to inject a sense of dread, and to hammer home Natalia’s adolescence. The Virgin of the Quarry Lake opens with Natalia getting her period, but there remains an ominous shopping cart outside her home, where blood drips constantly. The supernatural elements, while deployed economically, mostly work more in theory than in practice. Natalia’s rage at unrequited love makes sense as a tonal experiment, and to shake up the genre, but it almost comes at the expense of developing Natalia or Diego as characters. It feels generous to make the connection between adolescence and mysticism, and perhaps if Casabé had developed this more, it would connect better.

There’s more good than bad within The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, with Laura Casabé inserting an ever-present message about the dangers of growing up too fast, and with Dolores Oliverio delivering a performance beyond her years. But there’s something intangible holding the film back from the cream of the independent film festival crop.

The Virgin of the Quarry Lake had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2025.