{"id":2725,"date":"2011-10-04T16:05:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T16:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2725"},"modified":"2011-10-04T16:05:41","modified_gmt":"2011-10-04T16:05:41","slug":"the-headless-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/the-headless-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Headless Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Headless Woman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka La mujer sin cabeza
\n2008
\nArgentina | France | Italy | Spain
\nDirector: Lucrecia Martel
\nStory & screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
\nCinematogrpahy: B\u00e1rbara \u00c1lvarez
\nEditor: Miguel Schverdfinger
\nArt director: Maria Eugenia Sueiro
\nCast: Mar\u00eda Onetto (Ver\u00f3nica), Claudia Cantero (Josefina), C\u00e9sar Bord\u00f3n (Marcos), Daniel Genoud (Juan Manuel), Guillermo Arengo (Marcelo), In\u00e9s Efron (Candita), Mar\u00eda Vaner (T\u00eda Lala), Alicia Muxo), P\u00eda Uribelarrea<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re under the misapprehension that Argentina is a place of Latin style and sophistication, then The Headless Woman <\/strong>should act as a suitable antidote.\u00a0 This is a film populated by some of the most unappealing costumes and styles imaginable: bad hair (including the protagonists bleach bouffant, which recalls the similar coiffure sported by that celebrated fashion icon, Madge Bishop from Neighbours); terrible clothes (pink velour tracksuits, anyone) and horrible interiors.\u00a0 The women all look either like escapees from the armpits of the 80s, the men like Diego Maradona in one of his ropier periods.\u00a0 There\u2019s nary a pencil moustache or smart suit in sight.<\/p>\n

The plot is simple enough: while driving along a country road beside a canal, the resolutely middle class Ver\u00f3nica loses concentration while answering her mobile and hits\u2026 someone, or something, she\u2019s not sure what.\u00a0 Rather than stopping to investigate, she keeps on driving and descends into a state resembling post-traumatic shock.\u00a0 She hides out in a hotel, bumps into one of her many cousins and shags him, and eventually returns home in a somnambulant state.\u00a0 When she finally confesses what has happened to her husband, he doesn\u2019t believe her, and when they return to the scene of the accident there\u2019s no sign of a body.\u00a0 But could it be that the corpse \u2013 human or otherwise \u2013 has been washed away in the violent storms that have occurred in the meantime.<\/p>\n

An international co-production with backing from Spain, Italy and France as well as Argentina, not to mention input from the celebrated likes of Pedro Alm\u00f3dovar and Tilde Corsi, this was a high profile release directed by arthouse darling Lucrecia Martel, whose previous films, The Swamp<\/strong> (2001) and Holy Girl <\/strong>(2004) were held up as part of the renaissance in Latin American cinema during the early part of the decade.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, it was received with almost uniform adulation, picking up numerous awards and comments like \u2018Disturbing and deeply mysterious, this tale of ghosts and guilt is nothing short of a masterpiece\u2019 (Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian) and \u2018You’d have to be headless or heartless yourself not to let this extraordinary, eerie film get under your skin.\u2019 (Jonathan Romney in the Independent).\u00a0 In which case, I have to confess to being both headless and heartless because, although I\u2019m in no doubt as to the artistry with which it is made, the film itself left me cold.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s down to the fact that all of the characters are so unappealing: Veronica is a dullard, her family irritating, her husband almost as narcoleptic as she is.\u00a0 Frankly, considering she\u2019s killed someone she deserves everything that\u2019s coming to her, and I can\u2019t think of anything more repellant than not stopping your car and checking it out if there\u2019s even the chance that you\u2019ve hit someone.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s the fact that everything is so art-house standard obtuse: did she hit someone or not? Is she having a breakdown? What\u2019s the story with her creepy niece who seems to have lesbian designs on her?\u00a0 Who knows and, quite frankly, who cares.\u00a0 The trouble is that all of this obfuscation has become so predictable; Michael Haneke can get away with it because his films are interesting enough to sustain the ambiguity, but this isn\u2019t.\u00a0 And, please, please\u2026 can filmmakers stop with the annoying \u2018let\u2019s end with a scene cut off in the middle and absolutely nothing resolved\u2019 type endings; they\u2019re as much a stylistic trait of arthouse films nowadays as the \u2018priest revealed as the killer\u2019 in giallo movies, and just as much a product of lazy writing.<\/p>\n

Most unforgivably, even though it\u2019s a scanty 87 minutes long, The Headless Woman <\/strong>still manages to be really boring.\u00a0 I\u2019m not averse to deliberate pacing, and a lot of my favourite films of recent times The White Ribbon<\/strong>, Dogtooth<\/strong>, Katalin Varga <\/strong>– have been, well, slow.\u00a0 But, despite the fact that some people have painted this as a kind of Hitchcockian thriller or ghost story, this is both slow and dull.\u00a0 I\u2019m with Philip French of the Guardian, who was of the opinion that: \u2018\u2026 it’s an intriguing film, more alienating than involving, that ends abruptly and in my view unsatisfactorily. Some people whose opinion I respect regard it as a masterpiece, but after a single viewing I can’t share this view.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re under the misapprehension that Argentina is a place of Latin style and sophistication, then The Headless Woman should act as a suitable antidote…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2727,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725\/revisions\/2727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}