Holy Camp! is a Spanish musical comedy with themes of faith, sexuality and growing up. It features fun musical numbers, supportive nuns and a god figure who exclusively communicates in Whitney Houston songs. Say what you want about Holy Camp! , but it ain’t boring.
The film takes place at a Catholic summer camp. Best friends Maria and Susanna sneak out one night to go to a concert. The girls have dreams of their own musical stardom. However, the nuns catch them upon their return because a drunken Susanna made a scene. As punishment for sneaking out, the girls are kept back from a weekend where the other campers have gone kayaking. Left alone with nuns Sister Milagros and Mother Bernarda, Susanna and Maria have personal problems to work through. For Susanna, it is her sexual confusion. For Maria, it is her recent call to faith as she experiences visions of a God figure that appears to her singing Whitney Houston songs.
I was blindsided by the fact that Susanna ended up being the queer character in this film. In hindsight, that’s totally my own bad. I went into the movie assuming Maria was the lesbian character. As such, I focused too much on her story line. Still, I wonder if despite various hints leading up to Susanna’s coming out if other viewers, especially straight ones might be surprised as well. Not only does Susanna come out but she announces her love for Sister Milagros. The two had shared scenes together and while they were friendly but I didn’t detect romantic tension. It’s fairly subtle until the third act when it’s very much not. I think for someone viewing the film and not expecting either character to be queer, they too would be surprised by Susanna’s coming out. I absolutely don’t see this as a problem.
Holy Camp! is a religious film but I don’t think many religious or specifically Catholic people would particularly approve of its depiction of religion. On the plus side, this is a very wholesome version of Catholicism. Sister Milagros and Mother Bernarda clearly come at faith from a place of love. Their interactions with difficult teens Susanna and Maria are about support and an attempt at understanding. Mother Bernarda is also supportive when Milagros announces that she has feelings for Maria.
But beyond all this loving and acceptance stuff, Holy Camp’s main belief about faith is that worship and devotion are best expressed through music. Holy Camp’s version of God doesn’t even seem to care about what kind of music, but he won’t answer boring, spoken prayers. He only responds to musical numbers. Consequently, the third act is Susanna and Maria managing to summon God by doing a song and dance number in incredibly skimpy outfits complete with sexual choreography. Holy Camp’s God loves this! All these people in the world not getting answers for their prayers because this version of God is too busy appearing to teen girls in silver bras doing synchronized twerking. Their song isn’t even about faith. Honestly, the film’s whole take on religion and God is at least borderline blasphemous. Luckily for me, I’m not religious so I don’t really care.
Not to get spoilery, but the movie ends with God offering a hand to Maria and her accepting it. So I guess she ascends to heaven. Does that mean she dies? If not technically, she’s still not on this earth anymore. The nuns will have to explain that one to her parents. It’s sort of funny to me how the main character who wasn’t a lesbian is the one who died. I’m not sure if it was meant to be this way, but the ending of this film and its ramifications is one of the funniest things about Holy Camp!
As a final note, I liked the songs in Holy Camp! They were catchy. The music is well arranged and sung by people with talent. Yeah, half the songs are Whitney Houston covers. I certainly don’t have a problem with that. Many of the WLW musicals I’ve seen have had underwhelming musical numbers. I’d rank Holy Camp’s as among the best I’ve seen.
Holy Camp! is extremely strange in its mixture of faith but also emphasis on modern music and sensibilities. I can see religious or vehemently anti-religious people not enjoying the movie. However, the film has catchy songs and is reasonably funny so all in all, a it’s a successful musical comedy and certainly a unique film.
Overall rating: 6.4/10
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