La última virgen
2017 · 18m · España
Directed by Bàrbara Farré
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
Sara, a thirteen-year-old girl, needs to abandon her innocence to enter the adult world and fit in with her group of friends. Wrapped in a world where appearances reign, Sara will be forced to force her will, becoming one more victim of society.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's doing the 'loss of innocence' thing, but Farré refuses to make it cathartic or redemptive—just watches Sara get subsumed into the machine without the usual indie sob story. That's either too bleak or genuinely bracing, and I'm not sure which yet.
A formally composed meditation on adolescent capitulation that sits squarely in the European coming-of-age tradition—Farré's restraint with the camera and her refusal of sentimentality places this alongside the careful social realism of her lineage, demanding the viewer do the moral work.
The film's entire grip hinges on Farré's decision to keep Sara's face largely neutral throughout—no performance histrionics, just the smallest shifts in posture and eye contact as she disappears—and that economy of gesture does more to sell the premise than any monologue could.