The Headless Woman: Car Crash and Consequences

I'm a big admirer of Lucrecia Martel's 2002 La Ciénaga, and her latest also centers quite frankly on an exhausted Argentine woman of a certain age, one who's trying to keep up appearances despite the world crumbling around her. Driving home from the country, Verónica (María Onetto) looks down at her ringing cell phone and—bump!—hits something in the dusty road. She stops none too quickly, looks in the rear-view mirror (we can't tell what that thing is either), and drives on. It looks like the opening to a crime or blackmail movie, but Martel has other ideas. The home life and profession of Veró appear in fragments: She's bourgeois, has servants, possibly a husband, lover, and kids. Mainly she worries about her blonde hair, the humidity, and what a mess her gardener is making in the yard. Though gradually it emerges that Veró, a dentist, may have a conscience. And still more gradually that no one wants her to use it. Martel's storytelling can be frustratingly opaque, yet it fitfully sketches a kind of moral journey. And Onetto, who shares some of Joan Allen's stern beauty, keeps us watching throughout. Even when you can't tell what's happening with the movie, you can see something happening within her.