Opening shot of the year: The acoustic guitar music plays over a company logo at the head of the film, before the movie proper. A woman in a purple brocade jacket and a blue skirt walks through a field of tall, brown grass. Percussion enters the picture -- or the soundtrack. She looks us in the eye, and dances. (Bong Joon-ho's "Mother")
Final shot of the year: In a group of people photographed through a pair of thick, smoked-glass doors, only the title character appears out of focus. (Lucrecia Martel's "The Headless Woman")
Seeing both these movies in one day certainly makes October 2 the highlight of my movie year so far. "The Headless Woman," by the Argentinian director of "The Swamp" and "The Holy Girl," is a kind of "Repulsion" in reverse. (With a little Oliver Sacks thrown in.) It takes place inside the concussed head of a woman who may or may not have run over a child on a stretch of dirt road near a canal.
An astonishing three-shot sequence begins with the locked-down camera observing her in profile from the passenger seat. A silly, upbeat ABBA-esque pop tune ("Soleil, soleil...") fills the car. On the seat beside her, a cell phone rings. She fumbles to answer it, taking her eyes off the road. A horrible-sounding bump and she is propelled forward, hitting her head on the wheel, her sunglasses knocked off her face as she comes to a stop. Dust swirls outside and handprints are noticeable on the driver's side window. She sits. She composes herself. The infernal music continues. She almost turns around to look, but does not. She moves to open the car door but does not. Eventually, she accelerates. Cut to: A rear view. Receding in the distance is the body of a dog on the roadside -- a dog we have seen playing with three boys in the film's opening sequence. Cut to: Another angle from the front seat. The woman stops the car, gets out, leaving the door open. She walks out of the frame to the right, then through it and out of the frame to the left, then back again. Through the windshield we see her body, but not her head. One by one, big drops of rain start to fall on the glass.
The typical shot in "The Headless Woman" is a close-up or medium shot of Verónica (Maria Onetto) with the most important action occurring off-screen, seeping into our awareness through the layered buzzing and ringing ambience on the soundtrack, or out of focus in the background. Veró spends the early part of the film in a daze and barely speaking. As she begins to collect her wits, and her memory, she attempts to piece together what happened -- even as others around her try to protect her from... what? The truth? Suspicion? Herself?
There are no cutaways or inserts where you expect them to be -- and for that I am most grateful, because it allows us to piece together what we're experiencing indirectly, not precisely from Veró's POV (though we spend a lot of time looking over her shoulder), but at one remove from hers, which is one step removed from reality. The car itself, with its array of window-frames, becomes a metaphor for Verónica's psyche, fragmented and sealed off from the world outside even while passing through it. Martel's direction suggests far more than she shows, leaving us as disoriented and uncertain as Veró. When Veró reads a disturbing item in the paper, we see only her face and the gardener behind her, tapping stakes into the ground to uncover the dimensions of something -- a long-buried basin, perhaps -- impenetrable beneath the soil.
(Special pop quiz: Anybody recall who performed the 1971 pop hit "Mamy Blue"? Click on the title for the answer. See the movie for the reason behind the question.)
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Another film that insists you actually watch it is "Mother," from the director of "Memories of Murder" and "The Host." I'm told the Korean title is actually a pun that suggests both "mother" and "murder" -- and that is how it should be, as this is a Hitchockian murder mystery, rife with sexual overtones, and characterized by those quicksilver shifts of tone that are Bong Joon-ho's hallmark. Comedy, thriller, melodrama, surreal dream... Not unlike "The Headless Woman," the movie is at least partially filtered through a dazed consciousness -- in this case, a developmentally retarded (but don't call him "retard"!) 27-year-old young man named Do-Joon (Won Bin) who still sleeps with his ferociously devoted mother, Hye-Ja (Kim Hye-Ja). When Do-Joon is arrested for murder (only Bong would combine that moment with a stunning car wreck and then play it for comedy), mother will not rest until she gets to the bottom of what really happened.
"Mother" is a tangle of twists, digressions and dead ends -- directed with such wit and visual imagination that it keeps you on your toes. One set-piece involves a significant golf club, a woman hiding in a curtained closet, a couple having sex and then napping on a mattress only a few feet away, and an obstacle course of water bottles between the closet and the exit. Hitchcock would have howled with delight. I did, anyway, especially when the club emerges from between the curtains like a stiff-necked cobra. We won't even mention another shot of a hand-carried white plate with two cherry tomatoes rolling around on it and the two inactive black chopsticks beside them. Oh, what the heck -- it's so marvelous, let's mention it.
"Mother" also presents a strong contender for final shot of the year, another dance that becomes a frenzied play of light and shadow. Both these movies had me smiling in the dark and saying "wow" to myself again and again. Not because they hit me in the face with anything spectacular but because the intelligence apparent in every frame is electrifying to behold. This is what makes going to the movies fun.
Above: Detective Mother attempts to exit unobtrusively, clutching a crucial piece of evidence. Below: Mother tries to get through to her boy.
Hi Jim, first of all, let me tell you that your blog is one the most interesting and informed readings one can make about serious film criticism on the web. Although I never comment, I do read it every week and I love it, even if we don't always agree.
When I saw you mentioned Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, I realized that it is being played right now in San Juan's Film Festival (I live in Puerto Rico) and decided to check out some reviews in order to decide if I should see that or Chan Wook Pak's Thirst. I was in a famous review compilation site when I found this quote from Armond White : "Martel is a very minor art-filmmaker. Not especially insightful, she exemplifies the second-rate aesthetics of underdeveloped cultures." Needless to say, I was outraged, I mean, second rate aestethics of underdeveloped countries? In what world does this man live? I was moved to write a comment that I know share with you:
"Even if I rarely agree with your assesments on the films you suposedly review, I've never felt the necessity to write you, sir (maybe Sir is too respectful of a term to adress someone like you). One thing is to trash every other film because of what you mistakenly perceive as faults, another thing is to insult a whole culture by calling it underdeveloped and second rate. That's just plain racist, and no respectable publication should have among its staff such a spiteful human being. I haven't seen the film, but that's not the question. It may have indeed second rate aesthetics and that's your take on it, but atributting the issue, not the filmmaker, but to her country (or, as I think you see it, the whole southamerican continent) is just a moronic thought that should not be permitted. I'm not Argentinian, but I do know the great work of Borges, Julio Cortazar, Fabian Bielinsky, Eliseo Subiela, Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazolla, Bioy Casares, and many many others. I do not expect you to know, for example, that Antonioni's Blow Up is based on Cortazar Las Babas del Diablo, or that one of the biggest influences of Last Year at Marienbad is said to be Bioy Casares' La invencion de Morel. But no, I don't expect you to know -or yes, I think you know, but dont acknowledge- anything that doesn't work in favor of your agenda, whatever it may be. I think this publication should take this matter very seriously."
I just wanted to know what's your take on this matter? Don't you think the guy has gone too far? Or maybe he's done similar thing before and I dont know about them?
Ps. Sorry for my English, it's obviously not my first language.
JE: Thanks, Orlando. I put your comment where it should be and fixed that corrupted entry. I guess the thing to remember is that Armond White exemplifies the second-rate aesthetics of underdeveloped minds.
Seriously, The Headless Woman is SO good. I hope it gets a little wider distribution in the US.
JE: Good news -- it's been picked up by Strand Releasing.
Both available for download online. What a great time to be alive.
Great article Jim. I always appreciate it when you point out movies like these two that I would otherwise have no way of discovering.
Re: the previous comment, are these films really available for a (legal) download? Where can I get a copy?
I can't wait to see Bong Joon-ho's Mother at the forthcoming London Film Festival. In fact, I reckon Bong has already produced one of the decade's great final shots with Memories of Murder, the ending of which I found amazingly powerful.
This makes me want to watch The Headless Woman again. Your review was very insightful, and made a few points that hadn't really occurred to me.
These have both been on my radar for a while, now, but I doubt either of them will play within 100 miles of me. So I guess I'm waiting a bit.
Sigh.