The closest equivalent to Lucrecia Martel's "The Headless Woman" that I can think of is Michaelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up". On the surface, of course, they are very different films but thematically they share a similar conundrum and density. An affluent Argentinian woman, (she's a dentist), is driving home when she hits something or someone on the road. She stops momentarily and, without getting out off the car, drives on. Over the following days she becomes convinced she has killed someone but then, as she tries to retrace the events of that weekend, it becomes less and less clear to her and to us, what might have occurred. Is this a film about guilt? Is Vero, the woman in question, aware of what she has done and is she repressing it or are all her suppositions simply the result of a head injury sustained in the accident and are nothing more than a kind of dream or nightmare? Yes, this is a difficult film and requires a good deal of effort but the pace is deliberately slow giving us time to think about what is happening. The film may not provide us with the answers we might want but then I don't believe providing us with answers is what cinema should necessarily be about so long as it gives us the questions. There are questions galore in "The Headless Woman" and it simply shouldn't be missed.
Review of The Headless Woman
