La femme sans tête

The Headless Woman moves to the beat of its own drummer, which is Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, and if one is able to go with it it's quite an existential trip. Existential by which I mean a character's actions have consequences - or, if they don't, there is still the lingering sensation that they do. In this case a woman, Vero (Maria Onetto), hits something (or someone, an animal or a person, most likely a person), but keeps driving on. We don't really know what she hit either as Martel keeps the camera moving away from the person or thing from a great distance. It could be one of the children we see playing in the first scene in the film. Or it could be one of the dogs which Vero's husband or friend or other makes light of. Could be just a gigantic damn pot-hole. Who knows?

The film moves along like an existential parable, or, to put a more apt comparison, Antonioni's L'Avventura. We see something happen early in the film, and the rest of the runtime is spent with a character who keeps trying to face up to what happened, even as the details of the event and what happened slip away and the mundane quality of life takes over once again. We're not directed to the overarching issue of a real 'plot', just little things happening around Vero. She's in a bathroom soon after the accident cleaning herself up and in the background we hear dialog that could be referring to her about an accident, but isn't. She's in a car with someone passing by right where the accident was, and firemen are looking at at a pipe that's clogged (presumably from the storm) to see what it is. Could be anything, could be nothing. Who knows anything?

The Headless Woman is not for the impatient; even at 87 minutes it can be tiresome to see nothing exactly "happen" except a middle-aged woman with distinctly frizzy blonde hair (helping to also make an incredible poster image) quietly fretting about what happened, while her family and friends continue on with whatever is they do in their sort of bourgeois existence, and she goes back to work as a dentist. It's safe to say even I got a little fidgety at times. But I was never really bored, and her performance Onetto's performance kept me going even when the mundane took over. What happens when there are no consequences, Martel might be asking? Can one wipe away something like a hit-and-run when there's little left of evidence as to what was or wasn't there? It becomes a minor issue as the film goes on, being almost nothing in the last ten minutes.

But the film itself matters because it's finely shot (the cinematographer should have gotten all the awards he could get for his subtle and carefully haunted lighting and framing), and the tone is so assured. This is a mature film dealing with a subject that seems like what it is, a situation. A niche film that, when it works, is brilliant, and when it doesn't still looks pretty. Like Antonioni.

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.

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.

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.

This film shows how much Martel is a true Auteur. This film was fascinating to me. It really brings light to the people of Salta, Argentina. You definitely can understand the motif of this woman in a upper class family and the symbolism of the indigenous boy who represents the abandonment of lower class families by the government.