A Mulher Sem Cabeça

This review will be very short.

I found the film fascinating. It has a rhythm that is present in Martel's other film, La Ciénaga (2002) and is also filmed mid range. Martel's films are recognizable as being hers without prior knowledge.

I notice none of the other reviewers mentioned the symbolism that is present throughout the movie, most notably water - the characters are always going to take showers, or mention the prospect of rain, or are thirsty. Also, they always seem to be in confined spaces - a car, a small room, the husband's new swim trunks are too tight. I was fascinated by the symbolism, but have not found anyone to discuss it and try to interpret it with.

As with La Ciénaga, La Mujer Sin Cabeza, is overall a fascinating view of Argentine upper middle class family life.

This is definitely a strange film. It is certainly not for everyone, but it is not without anything good. To say this film has a story is like saying The Tree of Life has a plot. True but misleading. This movie does not follow any traditional narrative structure and lacks a clear resolution. It is written as if you are following a women as she goes through her daily life and as the film goes on it feels less like a film and more like a strangely filmed documentary. It has a unique visual style that heightens the sense of confusion felt by the protagonist by utilizing long takes that keep her in the frame, but cut off most of the action. It can feel at times like it is being strangely filmed for no good reason other than to be different. If you are looking for a strong story and/or plot you will be disappointed, but you should judge the film on its own terms and try to appreciate what its trying to do. It is by no means great and if you not are a fan of these kinds of films then you should avoid this one, but is at the very least an visual interesting film if somewhat narratively weak.

At once exquisitely crafted and exasperating, Martel's latest reflects the confused mental disintegration of a character whose problems are variably inchoate. Her crisis seems spurred by an act of accidental murder--in the countryside, she runs over something.

That it was a German Shepherd is clearly represented in one distinct post-impact shot following a prelude in which the hound is shown playing with several children. But afterward our protagonist (a dyejob-blonde, middle-aged, upper-class woman) has strange ideations of having killed a human being. Is that what really happened? Or is it just her guilt from...whatever?

There's nothing unintended in this very precisely directed movie, but at the same time its ambiguity can be frustrating. (Perhaps less so if you're better acquainted with Argentine class/race issues than me.) It's a mystery without a resolution, a thriller minus thrills. That's OK, but even as deliberate enigma "The Headless Woman" seems somewhat stillborn. (Think what Antonioni circa 1960 could have done with it!)

It's full of interesting detail yet void of larger meaning or narrative direction; intriguing in a way that stops just short of utter fascination. You can't fault the director or her actors for falling short--it's the script (also by Martel) that ends up a little too amorphous.

It's not often you see a movie that feels so close to brilliant, yet something indefinable is missing. This is a good film that perhaps in coming years will gain a reputation as an overlooked masterpiece--and while I can't sign on with that opinion right now, I can see how it might accumulate.

Wow. A lot going' on here. So let's jump right into a hearty but brief dissection of the unusual and unorthodox Argentinean drama "The Headless Woman".

A well-to-do dentist (María Onetto in a mesmerizing performance) hits something with her car on a dirt back road. A dog? A kid? It's not made expressly clear as she doesn't go back to investigate, instead choosing to drive onward. This occurs in the first few minutes of the story. For the rest of the film we watch as this woman descends ever deeper into a kind of detached and dazed mental and emotional disintegration. Metaphorically, she has "lost her head". Is she riddled by guilt? Fear? Uncertainty? Anything and everything? Writer/Director Lucrecia Martel never brings this entirely into focus, not unlike several of the fuzzily photographed scenes she utilizes to tell her peculiar tale.

One thing for sure, however. Martel has intentionally fashioned a treatise on an indoctrinated class separation between "the haves" and "the have-nots". She decisively presents this socioeconomic chasm as firmly entrenched institution in her native Argentina.

What is not nearly as obvious is the interpretation of "The Headless Woman" as allegorical commentary. And while, granted, this may be a stretch, it is not out of line by any means, either. To wit, Martel seems to be suggesting that this woman's capacity to put a potential tragedy behind her virtually as if it had never even happened is at least effectively similar to an apparent reluctance by many in Argentina to recognize the appalling and systematic mass executions by the country's government of those classified as dissident and subversive from the mid-1970's through the mid-'80's.

The closing blurred images of "The Headless Woman" depict a bewildered soul, one by way of the machinations of those around her who possess the power inherent to make unpleasant things "go away", is free to go on about the privileged preoccupations of fraternizing and partying with those of "her kind". And may the past be damned.

Or, more accurately, as we have come to understand over the trancelike course of events heretofore chronicled, and which are almost unquestionably still fated to linger in the memory of this descendant of the fortunate, damning.

Argentine politics from the 1970s and class differences of today play an important role in Lucrecia Martel's third film, The Headless Woman, the story of a middle-aged woman refusing to confront the truth about a hit and run accident. Shown at the Vancouver Film Festival, The Headless Woman, like Martel's earlier works, defies conventional cinematic language and can be challenging to appreciate on first viewing. Characters come and go, seemingly unrelated incidents pile up, and we hardly know who is who, but little of that ultimately matters. What is more important is that Martel has taken us effortlessly into the head of the main character as persuasively as any film in recent memory and has turned one woman's failings into a clear and simple statement of her own vision.

The Headless Woman opens on a rural road in Salta Province in northwest Argentina where four young boys and their dog are engaged in risky play along the highway as a car approaches. The atmosphere is one that portends danger. Meanwhile, a group of friends prepare to leave a gathering. Children are being shepherded in and out of cars while one mother, Josefina (Claudia Cantero) models her eyelashes in the car window. One woman (Maria Onetto) stands out because of the bleached blond color of her flowing hair that comes down to her shoulders The woman, Veronica (called Vero by her acquaintances), runs a dental clinic with her brother but we know nothing else about her life, past or present.

While driving home by herself, she hears the ring of her cell phone and is momentarily distracted from the road. Suddenly she feels a thud and her head is thrust backward, then forward onto the dash. Whether or not she has hit something, a dog or a person, is unclear because the woman is frozen into inaction for what seems to be an eternity. She stops the car but is unable or unwilling to step outside to see what happened. She thinks she sees a dog in the rear view mirror but does not turn around to get a closer look. Eventually she gets out of the car but simply stands there while the first drops of a heavy storm pound the windshield and we can see mysterious fingerprints on the side window.

Soon she drives off to be x-rayed at the local hospital while the radio plays Nana Mouskouri's "Soleil Soleil", a song that was popular in the seventies. She appears dazed and barely recognizes the people around her but continues smiling incessantly. Her husband Marcos (Cesar Bordon) notices her disorientation but learns nothing about that night until much later when she tells him that she may have killed someone. Juan Manuel (Daniel Genoud), her husband's cousin and occasional lover, calls the police and tells her there were no reports of an accident on that night but one week later, a boy's body is retrieved from the canal with no indication of a cause of death. The boy was one of the children who worked for her gardener. Immediately her friends cover all traces of her possible involvement in what could be a potential crime. X-rays disappear as well as records of her hotel room tryst with Juan Manuel. Similarly, her car is repaired with all traces of the accident removed.

The Headless Woman is grounded in Vero's inability to focus on the reality of the life happening all around her. She is a detached observer rather than a participant, operating in a world of privilege where her every need is met by her extended family or by dark-skinned servants and boys begging to give a car wash for something to eat. In that milieu, Vero can easily avoid taking responsibility for her actions whether it be cheating on her husband or failing to investigate a car accident. Like the pampered middle class of her country, she is deaf to the suffering around her, and her decision to forget may be a metaphor for the collective amnesia of her country of the torture and murder of thousands during the dictatorship of the seventies.

Martel has stated that her aesthetic decision to link the 70s with the current time is a statement calling attention to the fact that the blindness of the past continues to the present day in the growing disparity between rich and poor. That she has shaken us and provoked us to look at unpleasant facts about her characters, the world, and perhaps even about ourselves is a hint as to why her magnificent and audacious film was booed at the Cannes Film Festival.