Las hijas del fuego

The narrative of Albertina Carri’s latest feature entwines around long, very much full-on, sex scenes between several young women. The film often cuts to them with little warning like breakaway numbers in a musical, each with a theme of their own, from nature-fucking, to role play, to camp (a four-way in a church set to soaring singing, for example). As the frequent scenes become a normalized, expected element of the film, the regressive landscape in which these trysts take place comes to the surface. LAS HIJAS DEL FUEGO is about young women finding – or taking – pleasure and exerting strength and solidarity as a mode of survival in latent repressive times. Using the road-trip format, and the ostensible motivation that one of the main characters intends to direct a porno, Carri lightly sprinkles in moments of background and elements of fear, brought by men who pop in as objective ghouls, and from the grip of past repression, alluded to in voiceover. The explosive polyamorous sex is an affirmation of this survival; Carri has created a form of erotic film where the sex is performative, but it’s not necessarily being performed for you. (Rachael A. Rakes)