The Headless Woman

The Headless Woman (2008) dir. Lucrecia Martel
Starring: María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Bordón, Daniel Genoud

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman, premiered at Cannes in Official Competition to those inexplicable boos, which doesn't necessarily mean they disliked the film, but the critical reception was varied and the film was left empty handed of any awards. On the festival circuit scene it got nowhere near the attention of other high brow international art housers such as Gommorah, A Christmas Tale, The Class, Waltz With Bashir etc. While these other films got picked up for US and North American distribution by the heavier hitters such as Sony Picture Classics, IFC etc, The Headless Woman went nowhere, even topping Indiewire’s annual best ‘undistributed films list' of 2008.

Eventually it was snagged by the smaller Strand Releasing and quickly gained a critical cult following, with art house word of mouth rising in stature, attaining a place as THE art house film to see of that year, even securing a spot at #25 on The Toronto International Film Festival’s respected ‘alternative’ Decade Best of List.

It's no surprise the film took a while to gain traction. At a glance, it's inpenetrable. Few films have shown greater devotion to their ‘point of view’. There’s only a whiff of a story in The Headless Woman and little or no plot, yet it’s a remarkable attempt at execution of a completely unique style of storytelling.

The point of view in question belongs to Veronica (or Vero for short), a middle aged upper class Argentinean woman played brilliantly by María Onetto, whom we meet on the road in her car travelling home. As Martel does throughout the entire film, her camera is lasered in on Vero’s profile, at the wheel when she hits something on the road. She’s shaken and angry, and it isn’t until she drives away from the scene that we see in the distance a dead dog on the road. Yet through the hours and days after Vero is still shaken to the core as we watch her wander through the daily movements of her life in a daze, aloof, barely acknowledging her friends and family.

So what’s eating Vero?

Only midway through the film does Vero confess to her husband that she thinks she may have hit a child, but cannot be sure. As Vero continues these moving through these foggy days and nights we encounter details and snippets of information of the accident, a missing child, a blocked canal due to a carcass stopping the water flow, details which may or may not add up to any closure of Vero’s guilt-ridden angst.

When other characters talk, Martel is always on Vero’s face, observing her reactions. If the description of this film couldn’t get more unappealing, Vero barely has any reaction to the information and events after the accident. Martel is singular in her direction – show the internalized anguish and psychological torment of Vero at all times.

Martel is so vigilant with her point of view, her camera never leaves Maria Onetta’s head – I say ‘head’ instead of 'face', because half the time, it’s the back of her head in focus, or her profile we see instead of her face. Martel barely even shoots below her shoulders. Not since The Dardennes Bros exclusive shot Olivier Gourmet in Le Fils with one medium-close up has a director been so limiting with their camera. But as seen through Martel’s longish lens (which compresses the visual space in perspective ), Onetta is beautified, producing gorgeous and wholly cinematic compositions.

We never really get a satisfactory answers to the mysteries in the film, and the last shot which features the film’s only moment of music suggests an optimism that Vero will emerge from her haze. Or maybe not?

The open endedness shouldn’t come as any surprise considering the intellectual melancholy of Martel’s tone. That doesn’t mean it’s any less satisfying. Hell, I love closure, and hated the The White Ribbon for not providing any but The Headless Woman is a different film and we never feel Martel needed to solve its mystery in order to satisfy us (or at least me), thus earning her the right to leave us hanging.

The Secret in their Eyes

The Secret in their Eyes (2010) dir. Juan José Campanella
Starring: Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Pablo Rago, Javier Godino, Guillermo Francella

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Besting among others Michael Haneke’s ‘The White Ribbon’ and Jacques Audiard’s ‘A Prophet’ for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar certainly adds some high expectations to this film. Unfortunately it isn’t just expectations which cloud this overwrought and mishandled Argentinian thriller. A handful of fantastic individual set pieces and a fine performance from Ricardo "Mr. Argentina" Darín, aside, ‘El secreto de sus ojos’ suffers from an uneven mix of traditional procedural investigative thriller stuff with steamy romantic melodrama.

Darín plays Benjamin Esposito, a former federal court investigator whose unsolved case of rape and murder of a beautiful young girl 25 years prior dogs him to this day. In the present, he’s introduced as a writer trying to write a book on his experiences as a form of closure and catharsis. In addition to recollecting the details of the grisly case he also brings back memories of his colleague Irene Menéndez Hastings who was not only his partner but his one true love which never consummated.

Flashing back between the present and the various years in between Campanella tries to create an epic story of obsession and passion. Obsession of the case and Esposito’s passion for Irene.

The inclusion of this film on the Oscar shortlist is curious let alone winning the big prize. Granted there is one absolutely stunning scene at the midway point which is worth the price of admission - a one take long shot which is so astonishingly choreographed it rivals anything done in ‘Children of Men’. It’s a cat and mouse action chase within a soccer stadium, a magnificent (though digitally manipulated) unedited shot which starts on a helicopter flyover and joins into a handheld and mobile foot chase through the stadium stands, walkways and finally the field. It’s a riveting set piece, which perhaps is too good for the film, and actually makes us wonder or ask was this shot by another director? It’s about the only exciting moment in the film, the only time Campenella injects a sense of urgency.

The rest of the film plays out with a slow methodically culmination of angst-ridden reflections by Darin. Though the film spans 25 years we never get a sense of this time, other than some makeup wrinkles on Darin and some grey hair in his goatee. The procedural aspects of the investigation fail to draw us in, like say David Fincher’s ‘Zodiac’ did. Films like these live and die by the details, and sadly there’s isn’t much of a mystery to this case. There’s a suspect who gets chased and goes to prison but beats the system and is released. Unfortunately many of these details we don’t even see, instead receive as information dispensed by other people. For example, when Esposito finds out about the killer’s release it’s a wasted dramatic moment, which occurs when Esposito sees him on TV.

So maybe the film isn’t about the case at all. Most of Campanella’s time is spent dragging along Esposito’s forlorn love for Irene. Towards the end Campenella engineers a classic Hollywood ending aboard a train – Esposito’s agonizing goodbye to Irene which has him chugging away from the train station with Irene running behind after her. Like the chase scene, it's well shot, scored, blocked and acted, but so overly produced it jumps out at us like it’s from another movie.

The climax, I won’t ruin, but it too feels like directed by another director – Bryan Singer or Christopher Nolan in fact - a tightly edited and scored summation of the film’s details at the moment of Esposito’s dramatic final discovery. It’s a shocking moment, which again, works as a set piece, not adds nothing to the slothlike rhythm of the rest of the film. At best 'The Secret in Their Eyes" is trashy airport paperback fiction.

Berlin 2010-THE COUNTING OF THE DAMAGES

The Counting of the Damages* "El Recuento de los Daños" (2009)
dir. by Ines de Oliveira Cezar
Starring: Eva Bianco and Santiago Gobernori

*1/2

By Blair Stewart

1. If you're making an exploration of family grief in present-day Argentina don't short-change your audience's intelligence with an unwieldy mass of head-shaking coincidences.

2. Only use a numerical chapter system in your film if each section either advances or diverges from the expectations of the previous chapter. See "Dogville" for a good example. Otherwise you might find yourself in a dark cinema praying for 'ocho' to become 'nueve'.

3. When the brother-in-law said he was an 'astrologer' was that supposed to be a joke? If so the script's sign is in Cancer.

4. Labourious non-action and detachment is a poor substitute for storytelling verve and emotional involvement.

5. I now have a better understanding of that whole 'la bronca' thing that ex-pats from Buenos Aires are always talking about.

6. You can only have so many shots of characters mournfully standing alongside waterways before one wishes for said characters to go for a swim.

7. It's nice to make a metaphor for the scars of the defunct military dicatorship but it also fills the audience with the desire to see Polanski's "Death and the Maiden" instead.

8. Whoever suggested the plinky-plonky piano score may in fact be a saboteur. Flush them out!

9. Is Argentina berefit of Zoloft?

10. As the end credit rolled I fought an immense desire to raise my arms aloft and shout out 'Pour Que?!?'.

*If you give yourself the albatross of a pretentious title you should expect the theme of a snarky review to be 'The Airing of the Grievances'.

Sundance 2010 - SINS OF MY FATHER

Sins of my Father (2010) dir. Nicholas Entel
Documentary

***

By Alan Bacchus

The highly literal title of the picture adequately tells the story of a son atoning for the sins of his father. In this case, the son is the child of notorious Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Having known little about Pablo Escobar’s story prior to the screening, the film works well as both a comprehensive history of the controversial and violent life of the cocaine king of the 80's and the effect of such a life on the children involved.

Pablo Escobar died in 1994, and to separate himself from his sordid legacy his son, Juan Pablo Escobar chose to change his name to Sebastian Marroquin, and live in exile in Argentina. In present day Argentinian director Entel follows Sebastien’s attempts to reconcile his father’s violent past and connect with the sons of the men Escobar killed during the violent political drug war.

Going back into television archives, still photos and home movies of Escobar himself, we learn of the rise of Escobar’s Medellin’s cartel into a billion dollar business. Early on Escobar’s contributions to the poor communities of Columbia, establishing infrastructure, relocating ghetto housing communities and building soccer fields for kids gave him the moniker of a Columbian Robin Hood. But when his attempts to get into legitimate politics are stymied by his own political colleagues the lustre of Escobar-the hero rubs off revealing him as a vengeful despotic madman.

Escobar famously ordered the assassination of two of Columbia’s most prominent politicians, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and Luis Carlos Galan. These two events not only made Escobar an enemy of the Columbian people, but caused the sons of Galan and Bonilla to take up the torch of justice against Escobar’s stranglehold on the country.

And so the forgiveness of the sons of Galan and Bonilla becomes the symbol of catharsis for Sebastien.

Entel captures Sebastian’s journey to connect with his rivals, finding honest and genuine revelations of personal guilt and sorrow in a series of interviews at various stages in the journey. With competence he successfully interweaves the parallel stories of the Galan/Bonilla sons in the present revisiting their memories of their own father’s deaths and their own feelings of vengeance they once harboured. The men are sophisticated and self-aware and have clearly reconciled the events in the past a long time ago and so there‘s a distinct lack of suspense for this meeting. While their conversation is polite and congenial and accommodating, between the political lines, knowing the entrapment the drug trade has had on the nation for the past 30 years, the gravitas of the meeting for both them and their country is wholly palpable.

THE AURA

The Aura (2005) dir. Fabian Bielinsky
Starring: Ricardo Darin

**

“The Aura” is Argentinean director, Fabian Bielinsky’s follow-up to his indie hit “Nine Queen’s”. Sadly a year after its release Bielinsky died of a heart attack at 47. The film continues Bielinsky’s examination of the neo-crime genre. Whereas “Nine Queens” was a classic con-game, “The Aura” is harder to pin down. It’s set up and structured as a traditional crime/noir thriller, but is paced like a Kieslowki drama. These two qualities unfortunately compete with one another and cause the film to fail.

Esteban (the Argentine star, Ricardo Darín) is a detail-oriented introvert who works as a taxidermist in a museum. During a trip to the bank with his colleague, he observes the motions of the security guards and bank staff and describes to his friend a scenario of robbing the bank. Of course, he would never go through with it, but he finds joy in the possibility of him doing it. It’s a neat sequence as we see the hypothetical heist in progress as Esteban describes it. Unfortunately, it’s just a show-off set piece which could have been left on the cutting room floor.

We also learn that Esteban has a photographic memory, in addition to a bad case of chronic migraines (hence the title ‘Aura’). Not knowing anything about the film, it seemed to be setting up a ‘Memento’ or perhaps “Dead Zone”/Stephen King type of story. Instead it continues as a straight-ahead crime thriller.

Esteban and his colleague travel to woods to go hunting – this will take his mind off his troubles at home, which includes his wife who has just left him. Despite his job and his daydreams of criminal behaviour Esteban can’t shoot the animals. His colleague calls him soft - shattering his ego. Later on in the day, by accident he shoots and kills another man – a local hunter. Esteban is shocked, and decides to hide the body, instead of calling the police. Upon investigating the man’s possessions Esteban learns of a bank heist which the hunter was trying to set up. With the adrenaline of the kill still racing through him, he decides to enter the game of crime and deception and participate in the felony.

Esteban succeeds in this dangerous new world with his gift of observance, but of course, the thrill comes with the risk. The cool, slick elements are all there, mysterious keys, fragments of handwritten notes to decipher, hidden hand guns, casino chips and dog-eared maps. The plotting and execution of the crime is standard, and of course, he’s eventually found out and is forced to dig his way out of the mess he’s covered himself in.

The faults of the film surprisingly are fundamental. The film runs 2 hours and 15mins – and smells badly of an ego-film by a director with final cut authority. Pacing is very slow (it takes 25 min before the inciting action occurs), each scene could have had a 2-3 mins trimmed at the beginning and the end. In fact, it’s editing 101 to enter and end a scene at the precise moment in order to capture plot, character, and mood. It’s the apparent the director fell in love with his shots and couldn’t part with them. Esteban’s migraine auras doesn’t contribute to the film in any constructive way, it seems more an technical exercise for the director to show off. There are innumerable long lingering shots on trees, Esteban’s eyes or a dog’s snarl. On many occasions I wanted to yell, “Cut, Print, Check the Gate, Let’s move on!”

As a result a thriller which should have zipped along like a ‘Blood Simple”, “Red Rock West,” or even his own “Nine Queens” instead stumbles and staggers like a flat tire. Pass.