chief film critic for IndieWire.
hi.
There’s something kind of remarkable about watching a 90-minute film that only has a single idea spread across its entire running time — “what if ‘The Raid,’ but about a fairy tale princess trying to fight her way down from the castle tower where she’s been imprisoned by an evil suitor?” — but my awe at what passes for a movie these days was no match for my disappointment in this one. Hulu’s dull and exasperatingly basic “The Princess” wastes…
In some ways, Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) is the most liberated woman in the verdant, remote, and deceptively matriarchal Costa Rican village where she works for God. A semi-feral 40-year-old who — legend has it — was once visited by the Virgin Mary, Clara has been molded into a faith healer by her ultra-religious mother (Flor María Vargas Chaves as Fresia), who’s successfully rebranded her daughter’s curved spine and childlike intellect as symptoms of divinity.
Aside from miracles on demand,…
Barbara Minerva: I used to be a nerd who nobody liked but now I am hot and bulletproof and can pull off Robert Smith-levels of eyeliner.
Maxwell Lord: but don’t you want *more*?
Barbara Minerva: i want… to be cat.