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cinematicquack · 5 years

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The Headless Woman

After an interesting lecture about single shots, a small group of the resident ‘film nerdz’ decided to watch one of the films our lecturer used as an example: ‘The Headless Woman’. This film was an experience, masterfully created by director Lucrecia Martel. It encompasses the insanity of a disorientated middle-aged woman in Argentina; she’s quite the unreliable narrator - her recollection of events being distorted and therefore, the story is also distorted for us, the viewer. The cinematography helps emphasise this confusion - many shots having Vero’s head out-of-frame, resulting in a constant uneasiness as we witness her mind slowly deteriorating. What really strikes me when watching this film is the instant characterisation of Vero; the single shot of her in the car gives us everything we need to establish what kind of person Vero is. Vero is driving down a secluded road near a canal, calm rock music plays in the background. Her phone begins ringing so she turns to get it from her bag which is in the back seat, but suddenly she runs over something, her sunglasses being knocked off her face. We see her stare forward, shocked still, the music still playing. She glances at her rear-view mirror but does not exit the car. She restarts the car, bends down to get her sunglasses - she adjusts her hair and returns her sunglasses, then continues driving. We then see her exit the car further down the road and pace - her head cut off by the roof of the car. The camera doesn’t follow her either; as viewers, we have bee left adrift from our protagonist however, experience the same confusion and stress she does in this moment. This opening scene does an extraordinary job at introducing Vero’s stubborn and aloof nature; even when possibly killing something (or someone?) she just puts on her glasses and keeps on driving, only showing emotion once she is alone - even alone from the viewer. This distance created between protagonist and viewer exaggerates her aloofness and also conveys how unreliable Vero will be as a narrator for the rest of the film. She also repeats lots of the actions shown in this scene: adjusting her hair and putting on sunglasses to cover up her emotions. I love this immediate characterisation. When first watching the film it left me constantly wanting more insight into her perspective - and not until the end of the film did I realise that we were experiencing a lot of her perspective throughout the film, just not from her point of view. As I mentioned before, she strays out of shot, pacing around outside her car after just running doing a hit and run. We still experience her stress and uneasiness despite not being able to see her - we experience her emotions without seeing a blatant showing of them, therefore, we still sympathise and root for her as a protagonist.

This masterful manipulation of the camera work to still allow viewers to be invested and immersed in the film really makes this a must-watch in my books, I'm very glad my lecturer recommended it. I also have to apologise to my co-viewers as I did shout a lot about the purposeful use of colour within this film; ‘...children wearing blue!!’ and ‘...her nails are red, she’s caught red-handed...’ among other things (sorry again, but you can’t blame me as the colouring really added to the stress of the film).

Anyway, I’ve linked the trailer below if you want to see what I’m talking about.

Enjoy the film!

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