Hit and run: Maria Onetto as Verónica
Directed by Lucrecia Martel. Starring Maria Onetto, Claudia Cantero, Ines Efron, Daniel Genoud, Cesar Bordon Club, IFI, Dublin, 87 min
LUCRECIA MARTEL’S puzzling, purposefully evasive art film has had an appropriately peculiar history. Largely ignored at its Cannes debut two years ago, the Argentinean picture received rave reviews on subsequent releases and finally arrives here trailing a significant cult following. The praise is deserved.
It is true to say that, for all the film's rampant weirdness, The Headless Womanbreaks little new ground; it plays like an amalgam of Michaelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventuraand Blow Up. But the steady accumulation of vague dread is brilliantly achieved. and the film's many puzzles nag the brain long after the credits have rolled.
María Onetto plays Verónica, a middle-aged dentist, one member of a creepily dysfunctional family, who suffers a trauma after running over something – or someone – one evening. At first she convinces herself she merely hit a dog, but, as time passes, guilt and paranoia begin eating away at her.
A body is found blocking a nearby pipe. Landscape workers uncover some sort of covered pool beneath Verónica’s garden. Meanwhile various distinctly creepy relationships play themselves out within the protagonist’s family. A niece makes a pass at her. An elderly, infirm aunt suggest the entire clan is going crazy.
Summarised in that manner, The Headless Womansounds a little like a combination of Cold Comfort Farmand Midsomer Murders, but most of the relevant information emerges in muttered asides or via events in the corner of the screen. Composed of slightly disjointed sequences, whose apparent substance is often trivial, the film has a shape that reveals itself painfully slowly only after careful retrospective consideration. (Which is, let's be honest, another way of saying that the film often skirts close to tedium.)
Such ponderings reveal that, as well as being a relentlessly clever anti-thriller, The Headless Woman– shot in flooded colours and sombre shadows – quietly indicates certain malfunctions in Argentinean society. Remain patient and it should worm its way into your psyche.
