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The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain): 77

Simply one of the most confounding filmgoing experiences I've ever had, and as usual I'm uncertain how a "normal" viewer -- i.e., someone who hasn't made a point of entering the theater with no advance knowledge of any kind -- would likely respond. (If you want the full experience and haven't already encountered a basic plot summary, stop reading now.) Personally, I entered a fugue state right alongside Vero, drinking in the oddly unsettling compositions and straining to hear ominous offscreen noises with roughly the same air of pleasant bewilderment she evinces for pretty much the entire first half of the movie. As pure filmmaking, The Headless Woman is indisputably superb, non-stop evocative; there's scarcely a shot that doesn't throb with ambiguous menace and/or portent. It's just that when it ended, I didn't know what the hell I'd just seen. The handful of non-dismissive reviews from Cannes emphasize a strong political undercurrent -- Andrew O'Hehir, for example, deems it a "story of unacknowledged class warfare" -- but whether because I myself am an oblivious dude of privilege (albeit one currently living below the poverty line; donations to the Keep md'a in New York Fund welcome) or because I was too enraptured by the general moodiness to notice, this element made little to no impression on me. Instead, I find that I keep thinking of Inland Empire, another tale of a wealthy middle-aged woman who tumbles down an unexplained rabbit hole. (Laura Dern and María Onetto, it turns out, are almost exactly the same age.) But where Lynch's overt surrealism and Dern's mannered mutations set my teeth on edge -- "golly, ain't this bizarre?" -- Onetto's aimless journey as She With No Noggin is truly the stuff of nightmares, if only because the lady will not stop smiling. The rest of the world chugs along as if nothing has happened, but Vero has come unmoored -- a sensation that we fully share, because Martel cannily stages the accident mere seconds after introducing the character, so that we know absolutely nothing about her. She's surprised to discover that she's a dentist, and so are we. Who is this man now suddenly kissing her? Beats her; beats us. And yet her reaction to each successive jolt is identical: vaguely warm indulgence. Nor is there a moment anywhere in the film where she identifiably regains her sense of self, though it's clearly happened by about the midpoint. The whole thing is just...weird, in a way that's at once exciting and discomfiting. I've given it a provisional rating, but check back around 6 October (after it screens for the press again) for an update.

Posted on 10/08/08 by: dangelo 11:38 AM