The Headless Woman

Director: Lucrecia Martel

2008 / 87min / 35mm

In Martel’s beguiling, critically lauded, structurally splintered psychological thriller, poised, posh professional Veroníca (María Onetto) becomes increasingly unhinged after being involved in what may or may not have been a hit-and-run incident in rural Argentina. Martel’s genius for developing tension through the fine observation of behavioral eccentricities, the construction of unusual aural landscapes, and radical composition of screen space—achieved here with DP Bárbara Álvarez—has never been so evident as in this, her third feature. Daring, disorienting, and entirely original, like Martel’s work in total, it shows us that cinema is still being invented. 35mm theatrical print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive