The Virgin of the Quarry Lake (La virgen de la tosquera, 2025) ‘Sundance’ Movie Review: Potent and Disquieting Unravelling of Sexual Envy

In Laura Casabé’s arresting “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake” (La virgen de la tosquera, 2025), desire is so combustible it can alter, and reconfigure reality. Set in the early 2000s at the edges of Buenos Aires, the air is thick with sex, and erotic envy. An anxious craving for a physical experience perforates the movements and thoughts of the girls fronting the film.

Abandoned by her parents, Natalia (Dolores Oliviero) lives with her grandmother Rita (Luisa Merelas). She and her friends search for friendship and romance through online chat rooms. Through it, Natalia met Diego (Agustin Sosa) and has been utterly smitten since. However, Diego becomes the object of desire of the three girls. Natalia is sure of herself being romantically drawn to him, with whom she has had a longer, more intimate acquaintance. Her friend Josefina confides that she too is attracted to him. For her, it’s not love but a strong sexual thrust.

Josefina wants her first sexual experience to be with Diego. Natalia is startled but quickly suggests Diego will never be interested in her. However, she knows the real threat to her romance with the guy isn’t Josefina at all. The latter lacks confidence, and an attitude to go out and pursue her desire. Natalia stresses over the more sexually mature Silvia (Fernanda Echevarria) digging her nails into Diego, the two having met via a chat room, and drawing him farther and farther from her.

Silvia is sharp, and canny in laying quick possession to what she wants. She knows how to charm her way into arresting the complete attention of a guy. Silvia projects a colorful history, a past of traveling to many remote places, having had all sorts of experiences and scoring connections aplenty. They all hang out as a group, wandering through places she introduces. Silvia creates instant, striking impressions, swooping in to make her presence be undeniably felt the second Natalia and Diego get closer.

A scene in a bar that starts with a moment of intimacy between Natalia and Diego and gets hijacked by Silvia displays all the shifting power-play thrumming beneath. As a character, Diego himself exerts little, coming off as whimsical, going along with someone wielding a greater charm and discarding his previous sexual curiosity. What he thinks is peripheral. But Natalia is besotted, unable to wrench her gaze away from him even when she realizes his interest in her has whittled down. She is determined to recapture him.

Laura Casabé summons in the atmosphere a surge of electric, pulsing unnerving feelings, an all-annihilating desperation to slake sexual hunger. In the contesting play of attraction and attention lies the barely hidden, vicious sides of characters who may not wish to immediately make their desires, and designs known to the other. The film, however, isn’t interested in Silvia beyond being a competitor to Natalia.

Adapted by Benjamin Naishtat from two of Mariana Enriquez’s short stories, the narrative is wholly filtered through the lens of Natalia, who has unrequited passion churning within. “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake” scrapes out the scorching interplay between the intimate and the public. On the outskirts of Buenos Aires, there’s not a whole lot of opportunity, instead a teeming excess of time to kill. The economy is in tatters. Power cuts are constant. Tension, conflict singe regular life. The girls saunter through the streets, aching for adventure and nudged by the intense, exploratory urge of their adolescent age.

Amidst the grit of the life is also inserted elevated, supernaturally twisted moments. Rita is convinced the neighborhood is cursed in the wake of a local homeless man’s death. Natalia herself has some sort of sensory superpower that roots out whatever incurs her disfavor. This is not always convincing, leading to some clunky portions but doesn’t detract from the febrile undercurrents thrashing within The Virgin of the Quarry Lake. It’s an assured work with edges that cut, bolstered by a quietly compelling, seething Oliviero.