The death of a grandparent can be traumatic for any child, but in the case of Elena, the plucky 8-year-old heroine of Ana Ascensio’s La Niña de la Cabra (Goat Girl), the death of her grandmother brings about thoughts of not only sadness and grief, but also wonder, rebelliousness and existential curiosity. Is her grandmother now in some form of an afterlife, and if so, what does such a place look like? Why would God inflict seemingly wholesome, obedient followers with sudden and insoluble pain? What would happen if you stopped listening to God, refuted worship and instead were lured down a path of temptation away from salvation?
Such questions may seem daunting for adults in their unsolvable abstraction, but for an 8-year-old, they aren’t too radically different than “why do I have to go to Sunday school,” “why can’t I wear lipstick” or “why can’t I be friends with the new girl in school.” One of the charms of Goat Girl is the recognition that when you’re a kid, you ask many questions – the abstract as well as the banal – for which you receive very few satisfactory answers from adults. For Elena, who is only weeks away from preparing for taking her first communion, the death of her abuela early in the story causes her to question whether she really believes in God or not. “First Confession is like a good hot bath with lots of soap,” she is promised by her priest. “Rubbing well with the sponge until you get rid of all the dirt. The dirt of your hearts are your sins.” Elena remains skeptical, as she is plagued by nightmares of her dead grandmother and demonic black goats. Are these visions the sins that her first communion will expunge her of?
One day, everything changes for Elena when she meets Serezade (Juncal Fernández), a Romani girl who performs with her family and her beloved goat Lola outside her apartment complex. At first, Elena is transfixed by Serezade’s appearance, with her long hair, red skirt and handmade bracelets (plus anything is better than being around her overworked and distracted parents). But soon, the girls find solace in one another, bridging across their different cultural and economic backgrounds to form a friendship based on their need to find the answers to their questions through storytelling and playful invention. At one point, Elena explains that “man’s fear invented all the tales” and it’s no accident that Serezade’s name bears a striking resemblance to Scheherazade, the unreliable narrator and central storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.
Set in 1988 Madrid, Goat Girl uses the real-life kidnapping of businessman Emiliano Revilla by Basque separatists as a backdrop to the story, with television news reports occasionally reiterating the monetary reward offered to anyone able to locate Revilla. It should come as no real surprise that Revilla is seen in the film, but this aspect of the story feels more like magical realism than docudrama. Ascensio’s script offers a nuanced mixture of Spanish cultural specificity and universal truths about coming of age that should appeal to international viewers. At its best moments, the film recalls the films of Carlos Sutra, whose masterwork The Spirit of the Beehive also captured the existential guilt of a young girl growing up in a politically divided Spain, but whose salvation was found not by demonic goats, but in the iconic cinematic rendition of Frankenstein’s monster.
Director Ascensio demonstrates strength in her technical execution. Framing her subjects low to the ground with a wide camera aperture often obscuring many background details, the viewer feels the constraining boundaries of Elena’s tight world around her, until Ascensio breaks free by moving to a widescreen aspect ratio during Elena’s unexpected foray into the Romani campground. The production design is handsomely rendered too, with period-specific elements like wallpaper, ironing boards and televisions reinforcing the authenticity of time and space.
The film’s portrayals of Romani characters are handled with sensitivity and genuine inquisitiveness rather than spectacle or broad farce (although because the film is shown almost exclusively from a child’s perspective, we get little in terms of how the Romanis survive day-to-day). The film richly captures the mordant contradictions of the Catholic church, personified in the character of Father Carrillo (Enrique Villén). Although sometimes resembling a cross-eyed ogre, Carrillo comes off as more exasperated and stuck in a thankless role rather than truly venomous. One of the film’s funniest scenes involves Carrillo asking his young parishioners if they truly understand the meaning of first communion which, of course, they do not.
But the success of any coming-of-age fable like Goat Girl rests almost solely on the abilities of its main actors. As Elena, newcomer Alessandra González conveys a radiant and natural presence on the screen. She is neither over-the-top nor excessively sweet, and her subdued expressions convey an emptiness and longing that feels natural for a child experiencing their first spiritual crisis. Recalling Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project, she carries nearly every scene in the film with sincerity and aplomb, and her rapport with Fernández feels unforced and genuine.
The story of Goat Girl is ostensibly told as a memory, with an occasional voiceover from adult Elena (voiced by the director) suggesting that childhood spiritual reckoning may have been more imagined than real. The film ends on a thematically rich final shot, conveying the challenge of defying social expectations when adults have placed their hopes and blind faith on a younger generation. What matters for Elena more than mystical journeys or satanic goats, imagined or real, is the recognition that the adult world is full of non-closure and casual prejudices that all young adults must confront and rise above.
Such questions may seem daunting for adults in their unsolvable abstraction, but for an 8-year-old, they aren’t too radically different than “why do I have to go to Sunday school,” “why can’t I wear lipstick” or “why can’t I be friends with the new girl in school.” One of the charms of Goat Girl is the recognition that when you’re a kid, you ask many questions – the abstract as well as the banal – for which you receive very few satisfactory answers from adults. For Elena, who is only weeks away from preparing for taking her first communion, the death of her abuela early in the story causes her to question whether she really believes in God or not. “First Confession is like a good hot bath with lots of soap,” she is promised by her priest. “Rubbing well with the sponge until you get rid of all the dirt. The dirt of your hearts are your sins.” Elena remains skeptical, as she is plagued by nightmares of her dead grandmother and demonic black goats. Are these visions the sins that her first communion will expunge her of?
One day, everything changes for Elena when she meets Serezade (Juncal Fernández), a Romani girl who performs with her family and her beloved goat Lola outside her apartment complex. At first, Elena is transfixed by Serezade’s appearance, with her long hair, red skirt and handmade bracelets (plus anything is better than being around her overworked and distracted parents). But soon, the girls find solace in one another, bridging across their different cultural and economic backgrounds to form a friendship based on their need to find the answers to their questions through storytelling and playful invention. At one point, Elena explains that “man’s fear invented all the tales” and it’s no accident that Serezade’s name bears a striking resemblance to Scheherazade, the unreliable narrator and central storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.
Set in 1988 Madrid, Goat Girl uses the real-life kidnapping of businessman Emiliano Revilla by Basque separatists as a backdrop to the story, with television news reports occasionally reiterating the monetary reward offered to anyone able to locate Revilla. It should come as no real surprise that Revilla is seen in the film, but this aspect of the story feels more like magical realism than docudrama. Ascensio’s script offers a nuanced mixture of Spanish cultural specificity and universal truths about coming of age that should appeal to international viewers. At its best moments, the film recalls the films of Carlos Sutra, whose masterwork The Spirit of the Beehive also captured the existential guilt of a young girl growing up in a politically divided Spain, but whose salvation was found not by demonic goats, but in the iconic cinematic rendition of Frankenstein’s monster.
Director Ascensio demonstrates strength in her technical execution. Framing her subjects low to the ground with a wide camera aperture often obscuring many background details, the viewer feels the constraining boundaries of Elena’s tight world around her, until Ascensio breaks free by moving to a widescreen aspect ratio during Elena’s unexpected foray into the Romani campground. The production design is handsomely rendered too, with period-specific elements like wallpaper, ironing boards and televisions reinforcing the authenticity of time and space.
The film’s portrayals of Romani characters are handled with sensitivity and genuine inquisitiveness rather than spectacle or broad farce (although because the film is shown almost exclusively from a child’s perspective, we get little in terms of how the Romanis survive day-to-day). The film richly captures the mordant contradictions of the Catholic church, personified in the character of Father Carrillo (Enrique Villén). Although sometimes resembling a cross-eyed ogre, Carrillo comes off as more exasperated and stuck in a thankless role rather than truly venomous. One of the film’s funniest scenes involves Carrillo asking his young parishioners if they truly understand the meaning of first communion which, of course, they do not.
But the success of any coming-of-age fable like Goat Girl rests almost solely on the abilities of its main actors. As Elena, newcomer Alessandra González conveys a radiant and natural presence on the screen. She is neither over-the-top nor excessively sweet, and her subdued expressions convey an emptiness and longing that feels natural for a child experiencing their first spiritual crisis. Recalling Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project, she carries nearly every scene in the film with sincerity and aplomb, and her rapport with Fernández feels unforced and genuine.
The story of Goat Girl is ostensibly told as a memory, with an occasional voiceover from adult Elena (voiced by the director) suggesting that childhood spiritual reckoning may have been more imagined than real. The film ends on a thematically rich final shot, conveying the challenge of defying social expectations when adults have placed their hopes and blind faith on a younger generation. What matters for Elena more than mystical journeys or satanic goats, imagined or real, is the recognition that the adult world is full of non-closure and casual prejudices that all young adults must confront and rise above.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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