A wealthy woman (María Onetto) looks the other way after she might have run over someone in The Headless Woman
THE HEADLESS WOMAN (LA MUJER SIN CABEZA) (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, May 8, 11:30 am; Monday, May 11, 8:25; Tuesday, May 12, 7:15; Sunday, May 17, 8:10
metrograph.com
Inspired by nightmares she has in which she commits murder, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman details a woman’s emotional and psychological reaction after having possibly killed someone. María Onetto gives a mesmerizingly cool, distant performance as Veronica, a middle-aged, upper-class wife and mother whose biggest worry appears to be the turtles that have infested the new pool built behind a veterinary office. But one afternoon, while out driving carelessly in her Mercedes along a twisting, barren road, she hits something. Not sure if it was a child, an adult, or an animal, she decides to continue on, telling no one what she has done. But when a poor, local boy goes missing, she begins to suspect that she might have killed him.
An intriguing mix of Luis Buñuel’s class-consciousness and Edgar Allan Poe’s flair for suspense, The Headless Woman is an unusual kind of murder mystery. In Veronica, Argentine writer-director Martel (La Cienaga, The Holy Girl) has created a compelling protagonist/villain, played with expert calm and faraway eyes by Onetto (Montecristo, The Heavy Hand of the Law), who passed away in 2023 at the age of fifty-six.
A 4K digital restoration of The Headless Woman is screening at Metrograph on May 8, 11, 12, and 17, with Martel, whose first feature-length documentary, Our Land (Landmarks), came out last year, will be on hand for Q&As.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]