Reviewed by Justin Bateman
Stars María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, Inés Efron, Daniel Genoud, César Bordón, Guillermo Arengo, María Vaner, Pía Uribelarrea
Written by Lucrecia Martel
Produced by Pedro Almodóvar
Certification UK 12A
Runtime 87 minutes
Directed by Lucrecia Martel
Verónica (Onetto) is driving home from a friend’s party when her mobile phone rings. She looks down to find it and as she does so there is a sickening thud and focusing back on the road, she stops the car. It’s clear she’s hit something but Verónica is in shock and simply sits in the car, as if composing herself. After a few moments, she drives off, at which point the camera which has until this point been focused solely on her, shows the road behind her in which the motionless body of a dog lies.
She goes to hospital for x-rays and then books into a hotel. All the while this is happening she seems distracted, as well you might after running over a dog. The next day she has a call from the dentist and goes in, taking a place in the waiting room. The receptionist looks at her strangely because Verónica is the dentist.
This distraction is the reason for the title of the film, for Verónica seems to have lost her head, or at least her memory. After a while, she realises or thinks she realises, that she also hit a boy on the road. Her family assures her that isn’t the case and that she’s simply in shock. Meanwhile, she collects plant pots, sleeps and any number of other mundane chores.
While the total lack of incidental music, unusual camera angles (we see a lot of the back of Verónica’s head, part of the director’s way of putting the viewer in her shoes) and naturalistic (i.e. poor) lighting certainly adds to the sense of confusion, it does nothing to make this very watchable. Perhaps a bigger problem though is that although we’re unsure as to whether she did hit the boy as well as the dog, there’s no tension whatsoever. At no point is there any hint that she may be arrested or even questioned and you get the impression that even if she was, Verónica would simply quietly well up and accept her fate.
The Headless Woman is by no means a bad film, and as an idea it’s not without merits. Very few directors would dare to follow one character so closely, more as an exercise in observation than anything else. But in capturing the discombobulation of the protagonist, Martel is liable to lose most audiences through a lack of traditonal narrative - realism only goes so far,and there's a distinct lack of entertainment on offer. So while some interesting moral issues are raised and this will undoubtedly appeal to a certain arthouse crowd, in the end it simply isn’t engaging enough for this to be anything other than a puzzling experiment for those of us with less lofty cinematic requirements.