The Headless Woman

Most helpful review The Headless Woman

• A clever film but too slow

   

  By Tarumatu (39 reviews) from Brighton, England , 20 Apr 2011

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  [Highly rated reviewer]

  'The Headless Woman', a great B-movie film name, is the first film i've seen from Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel. The story is simple enough, a woman is a driver involved in a hit-and-run incident and has to endure the consequences of her actions.
  
  But this is not your typical Hitchcockian thriller, Martel has crafted an enigmatic exploration of life in Argentina. The story focuses on Vero (Maria Onetto), who was involved in the hit-and-run. The accident left Vero concussed, and suffering from amnesia. Stylistically, this is where the film becomes complicated. We view the film through Vero's unfocused struggle to regain her senses, similar to Christopher Nolan's brilliant 'Memento' but without the narration, and we slowly begin to understand who her family and friends are, her status and privilege. The film never gives you an easy answer, every person and every situation since the accident isn't explained in any detail because Vero hasn't understood it yet either. You may assume the first man that greets and makes love to her since the accident is her husband, but he turns out to be her cousin's husband.
  
  She confesses to her husband that she had killed someone in the car accident, but there was no trace of a body but a dead dog. Her cousin's husband works for the police, he found nothing either. Tiny snippets of information and subtle physical gestures and movements reveal some clues. A child has disappeared in the area and is eventually discovered in a storm drain. Was he her victim? Were the fingerprints on the car's window his or those of her own child? But Vero starts to question herself, wondering if she really did kill a person, was it only a dog or nothing at all, did the accident really happen? Her hospital admission suddenly disappeared from the records, as does her stay in a hotel. Is it all a cover-up by her husband, her cousin's husband, and her brother?
  
  'The Headless Woman' is an attack on the privileged and political elite in Argentina, following in the footsteps of other recent Argentinian film's such as the brilliant 'The Secret In Their Eyes'. The disappearance of Vero's records is a reference to the disappearance of Argentinians in the military dictatorships of the 1970's and 80's. We see how Vero's family is surrounded by lower-class people who are employed as cooks, gardeners and labourers. These people are all seen in the periphery as if they are invisible to Vero and her family.
  
  'The Headless Woman' is a very clever film, especially the unusual use of camera angles and sound on the peripheral characters. But this is not an easy film to watch as your concentration levels are tested to the maximum. Clues are always in the periphery, sometimes passing you by just too quickly. Maria Onetto is excellent as Vero, but her character intrigued me. Nobody, not her husband, her family or friends noticed anything different about her since the accident. Everybody carried on as normal, so either Vero never had an accident or this was merely normal behaviour from her!
  
  The pace of the film was just too slow, the film's complexity makes for repeated viewing but the film is so subdued and wilfully obtuse that you eventually lose interest. Lucrecia Martel's contempt for the Argentinian bourgeoisie is unmistakeable, we see through Vero a smug Argentinian elite who are above the law, with a lack of guilt, remorse and understanding towards any class below them.

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