Customer Reviews

The Headless Woman ( La mujer sin cabeza ) ( La femme sans tête ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, NTSC, Reg.4 Import - Argentina ]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A well-to-do Argentinean woman, obsessed with appearances and unhappy in her marriage, is driving home and reaching for her cell phone when suddenly she hits something along the road. She is visibly shaken, unable to bring herself to get out of the vehicle and see what she has done. She tells herself it was a stray dog, but when an impoverished local boy turns up missing, she begins to suspect that she is responsible. A heavy storm that followed the incident appears to have washed away any direct evidence, and as she sinks into a hopeless stupor, the men in her life work to cover up additional traces of whatever may or may not have happened.

The Headless Woman is a powerful film, that employs a formally rigorous style and subtle touch to tell a simple story with profound undercurrents. Tight closeups frame Veronica's face as she loses grip with her reality, and with the pampered simplicity of a bourgeois life. In many ways, as suggested by the title, this is a unique and subtle horror film, about a woman who has become a kind of ghostly presence in her own home, whose descent into madness is no more frightening than the inevitable reemergence of a "sanity" that remains largely blind to the tragedy and destitution of the many around her who serve the whims of the wealthy. I haven't had a chance to see Lucrecia Martel's other critically acclaimed films (La Cienaga, and The Holy Girl), but I'll be sure to catch them now. Her's is a unique and subtle voice in cinema, one of those rare formal poets of film, who on the evidence of this film alone merits comparison with some of the best, like Bresson and Ozu.

One caveat: the dvd transfer of my copy was imperfect. In several moments throughout the film I noticed digital artifacts, little green and blue flecks in the blacks, for example. The cinematography is one of the finest elements of this film, and it is disheartening to see it rendered less than perfectly. One can only hope that future versions of this film will do a better job. Also included on the dvd is an intriguing interview with the director, that confirmed some of my impressions of the film, captured after a screening of the film.

5 stars for the film; 3 stars for the dvd.

One of the thoughts I had several times while watching Lucrecia Martel's film, and even more afterwards, was how interesting it would be to be thrown into a film, or a novel, without any preconceptions whatsoever. Without knowing the title, the author or director, the country of origin, the time it was written/produced - nothing. Without preconceptions of any kind, one has to approach a work in complete honesty, unbiased and unaware of how one is "supposed" to experience it, how much one is "supposed" to like or dislike it. Of course many of us have that goal when we start a film or a book, but it's rare that we can really come close to achieving it; if we've seen an Orson Welles film before, and we're going to watch one now, we can't help but bring something to the table. In the case of this film, I knew very little about it before watching, other than that the director was a woman, it was from Argentina (a country from which I've seen one other film, which was made over 50 years ago), it was quite recent, and it had a good reputation. I had read no reviews, and little discussion of it, and I didn't know anything about the plot, and as it turns out, that was all especially to the advantage of the film as it is a film of unease, of dissassociation and disconnection, and it offers no easy answers and few clues as to its methods or direction.

There's a brief prologue in which we see three young dark-skinned boys playing by the side of a road and canal, with a dog. Then a middle-aged woman, leaving a group of adults and kids, and getting in her car. She drives along the same road and canal that we saw in the first scene; her phone rings, and she fumbles for it, swerving and hitting something. She drives on, not stopping, seeing a large shape in her rear view mirror. A dog? Or something else? Eventually she stops, it begins to rain, and she gets out of the car to look at the possible damage. All of this is encompassed in one shot, and we can see that even at the moment of impact, there is something not right here, the reaction of the woman, Vero (Maria Onetto) is very subdued, almost to the point of dismissal or refusal. A minor annoyance that she wants to do away with. There are fingerprints on her window, but whether they were there before, she and we cannot say for sure.

She goes to a hospital to get x-rayed; she seems unhurt. She takes her car to a garage; she goes to a hotel. She is distracted and seems not to be paying attention to much of anything. A man comes to the hotel - she grabs him fiercely, starts to pull his clothes off in powerful need. He is her cousin, we learn later. Eventually she ends up at home; it is a comfortable, large bourgeois home and she has an Indian maid and a gardener. She goes to the dentist's office, taking a cab; once there she sits down as if to wait, but then we find out - as she does, to her brief amazement - that she is the dentist. She goes home; her husband, who is her partner, takes her patients. Eventually she mentions to her husband that she hit a dog, but she remains unsure, and her sense of discomfort with the accident, and with herself, continues to grow. She goes to visit her mother who is in a nursing facility and has Alzheimers or some other memory loss; significantly neither Vero nor her family members seem to make the connection between her mother's mental problems and her own, though there is a fascinating identical bit involving first Vero, and later her mother, worrying about their "filthy" hair.

The disconnection in THE HEADLESS WOMAN involves not only Vero's personal story with the dog, or boy, that she may have hit, but also in her growing dissassociation with all of those around her, and by implication a realization that her life as an upper-class woman of mostly European origin sets her apart from her servants, clients, perhaps even her family, none of whom looks as pale or Old World in complexion. Late in the film she decides to die her hair; she had been the only blonde character in the film, and she dies her hair almost jet black. Her sister asks a strange question - if that's her natural color - and Vero answers that she thinks it was, but it's all gray now. But she can't seem to come to terms with what has happened, and this leads to a further and further drifting from her own world - but never towards the worlds of the lower classes, the indigenous natives, of guilt, of understanding what she may have done.

It's a very strong film, and the Cinemascope framing and regular use of rain and glass, of doors and windows bisecting the frame help to give us clues throughout that something is amiss, though we can never be much more certain than Vero as to what the problem really is. Did she not stop because she is so self-absorbed that the possiblity of killing someone else just didn't matter? Is it that she wasn't worried because the only people out in this area were lower-class Indians, who she feels separated from and superior to? Is she dealing with the onset of Alzheimers herself, and afraid to admit to or deal with that possibility, seeing what is happening to her mother? We don't know, we are left as in the dark as Vero, and this film as much as any I've seen really communicates that sense of isolation that a person can feel when they feel a loss of mental faculties and emotional stability, but aren't ready to admit or deal with it in any way. If I don't quite LOVE the film, it's I suppose because I'm not sure how to feel either, and I guess for once I would have appreciated just a little more grounding. But I suspect that another viewing will take care of some of my issues.

Maria Onetto has an extraordinarily difficult task - playing a woman cut off from herself and everyone whose occasional slips of emotion and self-awareness have to seem inexplicable, even random - and she carries it off brilliantly, always the center of our attention even though she is losing herself and fading away. The rest of the cast is quite fine as well but the film is really entirely hers; I should also mention the exceptional naturalistic cinematography of Bárbara Álvarez who accomplishes some real miracles with rain and with light distortion and soft focus in parts of the frame at various times which helps to indicate Vero's disconnect from everything and everyone around her. It's all quite subtle - perhaps at times a little too subtle - but I think it will be quite rewarding for the patient. I'll definitely be checking out Ms. Martel's earlier films.

In the minimalist Argentine drama "The Headless Woman," a distracted motorist (ah those damn cell phones!) runs over something - a dog? a person? - on a deserted country road, but rather than stop and deal with the consequences of what she has done, she continues on her way, never quite sure of who or what it was she actually hit. The movie then goes on to chronicle the woman's emotional and psychological response to the accident, as she endeavors in vain to re-establish the patterns and routines of her daily life, wracked with guilt over the part she played in the tragedy. Or is she?

"The Headless Woman" is a challenging film in that it steadfastly refuses to go for the obvious in its narrative choices. It can be frustrating to watch at times because the main character, Vero, keeps so much of her thoughts and feelings bottled up inside her that it is left up to us to try and figure out what is really taking place behind that nearly perpetual deer-in-the-headlights expression she displays to the world. On the surface, Vero is a successful dentist with two grown kids, a critically ill mother whom she helps care for, and a husband for whom any real feelings would appear to have long ago been extinguished. Yet, because she is given barely a word of dialogue to speak throughout the course of the movie, the marvelously stoic Maria Onetto is forced to rely almost exclusively on the subtlest of body language and facial tics to create a character of tremendous mystery and depth. The barest quiver of the mouth, the slightest twitch fluttering across an otherwise soporifically placid face - this is where the true drama of "The Headless Woman" plays itself out. For, indeed, in "The Headless Woman," the things that are NOT said carry far more weight, thematically and psychologically, than the things that are. And, unlike in the vast majority of movies, the drama derives not so much from a densely plotted narrative as from a scrupulously detached and nonjudgmental observation of human activity and behavior. Indeed, the plot becomes barely incidental to the accumulation of detail that writer/director Lucretia Martel uses for her art.

Indeed, if this were an American film on the same subject, I suspect that there would be plenty of introspective soul-baring, angst-ridden chest-beating and Simple Simon lesson-learning to go along with the tragedy. But Martel is in no way interested in any of that. In fact, one of the beauties of the film is that it refuses to cater to our own expectations of how we feel a person - and, by extension, we ourselves - would or should react in such a situation. And it is that unconventionality that keeps us emotionally off-balanced for the duration of the story. We want to make a moral judgment against this woman but the author steadfastly refuses to give us that opportunity. Martel's concern is simply to tell this one woman's story in the sparest way possible and then let the audience come to its own conclusion about what, if anything, it all "means."

Thus, with its oblique style, enigmatic characters, and inconclusive ending, "The Headless Woman" is not a movie all people will be able to get into, but those who do are not likely to forget the experience.

Martel is quickly becoming a master of her own filmic sensibility, which I might call the "art of eavesdropping cinema," and she makes consummate use of something inherent to the medium to take us inside the characters and content of stories that have almost nothing to do with traditional plot points.

As an audience, we are all eavesdroppers (or voyeurs) when we watch a movie. And Martel's sensibility, or way of telling a story, is not only to provide clues to what she is investigating, but to inform us with what she considers important about it. There is a bit of Hitchcock (Rear Window comes to mind), and certainly some of Altman's audio technique around conversation. There is also an exploration of neurosis that one might liken to Almodovar (her producer), yet without the bold, soap operatic farce. And there is also something of Bergman and Antonioni.

La Mujer Sin Cabeza (while not my favorite of her films) is still a sure step forward as a filmmaker. This is not only her most focused film, but it makes use of a more developed cinematic technique than either of her previous two films. Strangely, it has not been received as well. The problem, I believe, has much to due to the predisposition of most film viewers, who not only lack of patience, but the ability to adjust to a film operating in ways they are not accustomed to.

Martel's narratives may seem disjointed at first, as they jump from one scene to another without obvious connection, but they are extremely well thought out. The problem, as I said, has more to do with confounded viewer expectations, and the inability to adapt to a different approach in cinematic narrative, one that is very appropriate to the content of Martel's design. For the uninitiated, her films benefit from a second viewing, if only because what at first seems insignificant or disconnected is actually very important, and provides access to her dry subtle satire.

The power of "Mujer Sin Cabeza," (as with all films) is grounded in our perceptions of the main character's experience (or our experience of her perceptions), which not only infect us with her mental / emotional state, but draw us into the kind of life that she leads, in the balance, providing us a window into modern day Argentina.

Here, we are also made aware of a social system in the midst of decay, being held together by the ever more twisted and frayed threads of a colonial past that seeks preservation, in spite of increasing moral disfunction, and the inability to take responsibility for anything that interferes with the social system beyond making it disappear...

A dentist, Verónica, has a car accident on the way home from a family get-together. Has she hit a dog, or a child? What should she do? Lucrecia Martel's remarkable third feature follows the traumatised heroine as she floats through her habitual daily routines. The result is a psychological thriller that segues from the mystery of an individual crime to a compelling exploration of communal guilt.Following the accident,due to amnesia ,a bump to the head,anxiety and guilt,she seems to suffer from a `fugue state'.She's unable to recognize her old life,she even sits in the waiting room of her own dentist practice.She runs up the stairs from her husband,not knowing who he is.Surrounding her is the ambient sound track,electrical noises,noises in nature,a cacophony of voices.These get filtered out as her life clicks back into place.

Cinema for Martel is a process of thinking,forcing us to face unpleasant facts.This demands close attention, demonstrates Martel's extraordinary cinematic vision and skill with actors.Her camera is like a microscope. Her story -unacknowledged class warfare- is rendered mostly through images and body language; lead actress María Onetto gives a remarkable performance, but for much of the film she hardly speaks at all.The cleaners and gardeners and servants are all natives:we rarely see a face and never get a name.An Indian boy has disappeared,a body has been found bunging up the canal.You never see this dead body.Although, you could make the case that the "nothing" happened after the accident,the film gives evidence to support a cover-up by her husband and family.As well as being a parable about the evasions of Argentina's dictatorship years,it's also about social class in contemporary Argentina.She comes out the other side of discombobulation,emerging back into her former life,like a laundered conscience.The film is situated in the northwestern Salta landscape of earlier films.

Another name for the film might have been Through a Glass Subtily.The shadowy servants are only ever partially in view.These people's stories are filtered through windows,glass doors and water.The film implies Argentina is like a house full of ghosts.We hear a bed-ridden character say:"If you don't look at them,they just go away" as one native child steals away from her bedroom.This film may take a few viewings to appreciate,but worth it for that.

My rating has to do with the functionality of the DVD.

This is the first foreign language DVD I've ever purchased that had no option for turning off the subtitles. This was especially annoying for me because I'm trying to learn the language and didn't want to see the translation. I think anyone who already knows the language would be equally annoyed at being forced to watch the subtitles.

I can give this DVD release only three stars due the poor functionality.

This movie had a chance to be some kind of metaphorical or symbolic commentary on women, society, or something else...but it's never really clear what it's supposed to be about. I wasn't expecting a literally headless woman, and I have a pretty good grasp of symbolism. This film simply does not succeed in getting its point across, if it even had a point to begin with.

Review: Good. I expected more from the film. I feel it was inconclusive.

Once again, I venture forth into the "foreign" offerings of my local library, determined to expand my narrow viewpoints of cinema and educate myself, albeit in a lazy and slothful manner. Since my movie-viewing experiences have let me know that the Japanese have monsters attacking Tokyo, the Germans have a cannibal or two, all Eastern European factories are full of psychopaths, and the French occassionally wield a chainsaw with great abandon, I saw this and thought "Argentinians! Severed heads! I'm totally there."

Imagine my utter disappointment when I am confronted with a character (or is it lack of character - see, I'm not entirely an idiot, here) study, a class study (ok, so rich people have it better...), and social study (not so much - if you can't take care of yourself, then others will help you do it, and I don't see that as being paternalistic inasmuch as helping the ones you care about) that managed to tax the very bounds of my toleration of minimalism.

I did thoroughly enjoy others reviews of this film, since it shed light on a few points that I did not consider, but my concerns lie with my movie-purchasing buddy, the easily-swayed Joe Sixpack (preferably with imported, non-Heineken brands), who sees many exciting and big words on the DVD packaging, and decides to take them seriously. "Mesmerizing! Tantalizing," it shouts, "One of the great films of the decade!" it enthuses (and what rational human can pass that up?), and other glorious adjectives worth rolling in. You will not like this movie. Lots of driving, bad cinematography, a few words here and there, and the ever-increasing desire to grab the main character and shake her alive, awake, anything to bring her back to reality. She staggers around from one boring social interaction to another, as empty as those stupid pots she wants that guy to get down from the ceiling. It was hard to recall that she was full of life at the beginning of the film, and I probably could have used a few more minutes of that to provide contrast with her persona later.

Hm. I may have to add a star, since I am still mulling the film over, days after seeing it, thinking over different points and subtle moments. I can't quite let it go, and that makes it a better film indeed. But, you still won't like it if you were expecting severed heads in all their "Vivid! Astounding!" glory.

Truly a waste of time, effort and money. I happen to view a lot of films, and this one is pretty much at the bottom. I would summarize by saying that it is a meaningless bore distinguished by poor lighting, no discernible plot, and long lapses of inaction. It is the height of folly that this film actually receivied accolades from the so-called "Artistic Community." I'm no Philistine--but please!! Avoid this one at all costs.