This arthouse drama at first revels in its psychosocial complexity but its deliberate emotional inaccessibility will frustrate before the close.
While driving home past a dry canal, middle-aged Buenos Aires dentist Vero (Onetto) hits 'something' on the dirt road. In a state of shock, she takes a few minutes to get herself together and, without looking back, drives home. After a brief visit to the hospital for a small cut on her forehead, Vero goes about her day with a stunned bemusement; she can only smile when someone asks her a question and when she does eventually speak, an old relative points out, "That voice doesn't sound like yours." For a few days she remains on the margins of life, going through the motions in a robotic manner, but finally she can take no more and confesses to her husband Marcos (Bordon) that she may have killed a boy. But did she or didn't she is the question posed by director Lucrecia Martel.
Martel shoots the proceedings as if it's a waking dream, one of those dreams you know it's a dream but still can't do anything about it - the disorientation, the vague emotions, the observation of oneself in an otherworldly situation. It's a film low on style with Martel concentrating solely on Vero throughout and the inner workings of her mind. For the majority of the running time, the audience is just an observer wondering what will happen next, when she will snap, etc, but then Martel presents Vero from the back or side on. It's a clever little tactic because since we can't see her face, Martel is urging the audience to put ourselves in Vero's position, to think as she thinks, to feel as she feels. It works. A film that's stripped back on style, Martel is only concerned with telling the story and not drawing attention to herself.
But is The Headless Woman subtle or dull? To be honest, it's a bit of both. Despite the story lacking a narrative thrust, there is a certain energy and tension to the plot as we're just waiting for Vero to snap. But the waiting, after a time, begins to grate and the film peters out, preferring instead to stick to its arthouse principles rather than boast a climax worthy of the build up. It may be short at 87 minutes, but The Headless Woman still feels padded. There are two sub plots - Vero is having an affair with her friend's husband and his daughter is in love with her - but neither go anywhere. It's tough too to figure out who is who and how they are related to each other - Martel refuses to pin down anything in her film and it suffers because of it.
