Film Style and Meaning : The Headless Woman

Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn
Queen Mary, University of London
14th November 2011
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Though directing just three feature films, Lucrecia Martel is seen as one of the most

important figures in world cinema. One of the reasons that her films are regarded as 'highly

influential' (Shaw, 2007 : 10) comes from the fact that the aesthetics in her films are 'fresh and

innovative' and designed to create 'a new language' (Falicov, 2007 : 126). In this analysis of The

Headless Woman, her critically acclaimed1 film in 2008, I will analyze the film form and a

particular mode of spectatorship. Basically, I will divide the essay into three sections. First, it will

focus on the narrative. Then, it will demonstrate the film style, spectatorship and detailed close

textual analysis on selected key scenes. Finally, it will discuss how Sigmund Freud's concept of

'disavowal' relates to the film's form, meaning and spectatorship.

Narrative

Throughout the 88 minutes of screen duration, the film follows one woman's journey

through her daily life for a week. The story is told chronologically from the woman's viewpoint and

there is no subplot. In other words, the film's narrative is designed for the viewers to explore an

individual subjectivity.

The plot can be divided briefly into seven segments:

1. A group of Indian boys and a dog run around a suburban highway.

2. The film introduces Veronica, a blonde bourgeoise. While driving alone, she hits

something but runs away from the scene. She goes for a health check-up at a hospital and stays at a

hotel. It can be interpreted that she suffers from temporary memory loss but she tells no one.

3. Despite not remembering her identity, Veronica continues her daily activities.

4. Veronica confesses to her husband that she killed someone but her husband tells her to

stop thinking about it.

1. The film was nominated for the Palme D'or at Cannes Film Festival in 2008. On the cover of Sight and Sound
(September 2010), the film was chosen as a milestone of the Latin American Cinema movement “From Amores Perros
to The Headless Woman”.
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5. The film shows series of Veronica's guilt-ridden steps. However, her husband still

confirms that she should move on. When she goes to the hospital for the x-ray result, her record has

disappeared.

6. Veronica gives up her guilt, dyes her hair (from blonde to brunette - like other members of

her family) and goes to work.

7. When she goes to a party at the hotel she stayed after the accident, she asks a receptionist

for her record of stay but it has disappeared. She moves on and enjoys a bourgeois party.

From the plot, the elements that drive the spectator's expectation are, actually, offscreen.

Since the spectator is placed in the similar position with Veronica, he/she can see what Veronica is

allowed to see. The offscreen spaces in the narrative bring three unanswered questions. First, what

does Veronica hit? Is it a boy or a dog? There is only one shot, which is an extreme long shot, of the

victim so the viewer cannot see it clearly. The boys and the dog in the first sequence, which is the

only sequence that is not Veronica's gaze, are used to cue the audience's expectation. Second, who is

her protector? What is the system that covers Veronica's crime? The film implies the protector as a

shape of the husband and the bourgeoisie. Finally, what does Veronica think? Although Veronica is

presented in nearly every scene and the spectator witnesses her closely, we cannot understand

Veronica's inner life. Since Veronica rarely speaks and tries to hide her loss of identity, the only way

to connect with Veronica's self is observing her gesture.

Furthermore, the offscreen spaces do not only play a crucial role on the narrative, but also on

the mise-en-scene.

Film Style and Spectatorship

Though the relationship between the spaces, both within and outside the film frame, and the

mental engagement of the spectator can be found in every film, such relationship is richly
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experimented here. On one hand, the film style is used to place the audience into the similar

position with Veronica, so the audience can witness her suffering from guilt and temporal memory

loss. On the other hand, the style creates a distance between the spectator and Veronica, so the

spectator can have their own space to critically think about Veronica's process of guilt denial.

To make this function happens, first, Martel presents the film with widescreen and uses

cinemascope lens. Most of the film's shots are medium shots and close-ups. This style makes both

Veronica and the spectator claustrophobic while creating offscreen spaces. There are a few

establishing shots before the accident, after that, the film has no establishing shot at all because it

wants to depict how Veronica loses her senses of spatiality and other people's identities.

To emphasize such losses, Martel shoots many key scenes with shallow focus. With this

technique, Veronica is in focus while other characters and places are out of focus. Shallow focus has

two functions in this film. First, it individualizes Veronica and illustrates how she is alienated from

her environment. Second, such technique symbolizes the theme of the film : blurring, forgetting and

denial. Moreover, the title of the film has a literal meaning because in many shots, the characters'

heads are cut off because of the framing (figure A-C). These shots symbolize Veronica's identity

crisis.

Figure A. and B.

Figure C.
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Figure D. Figure E.

Figure F. Figure G.

To make my argument clearer, I will analyze one scene which summarizes the style. It

happens at the third quarter of the film. Consumed by her guilt, Veronica comes to sit at her

mother's bedside. The lighting is low-key. There are eight shots in the scene. The first, third, fifth

and seventh are the close-up reaction shots of Veronica's mother. I will focus on the other shots

instead.

The scene starts at Veronica's mother (figure D).

The second shot (figure E-G) is a medium shot. Veronica sits on the bed (figure E). There

are offscreen dialogues of a woman. Then, two women, Veronica's cousins, appear on the

background but they are out of focus (figure F). Next, Veronica stands up and her head is off the

frame. In other words, she is headless - the film's motif (figure G). Her mother talks in her sleep so

Veronica sits on the bed again. Suddenly, there is an offscreen sound of a toy car (the car signifies

the accident). Veronica is scared and looks for the origin of the sound but her mother tells her not to
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look because it is the sound of a ghost.

Figure H. Figure I.

Figure J. Figure K.

Figure L.

The third shot (figure H): the mother.

The fourth shot (figure I) is a shallow-focused, close-up shot of Veronica's face. She is on

focus at the right side of the frame. The spectator sees just one side of the face. The background is
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out of focus and it is divided by the light and the scenery. The left side background is a bright

blurred space of an open door.

The fifth shot (figure J): the mother.

The sixth shot (figure K-L) is like the fourth but a long take. The mother's voice is offscreen

and she talks about the ghost in the house. The sound of toy car is louder. Since her face is placed to

show just one side to the camera, there is a limited space of facial expression that the spectator can

see. However, the actress who plays Veronica is brilliant. She shifts the angle of her head slowly to

show how scared Veronica is (figure K). Suddenly, there is a young boy slowly standing up (figure

L). Since he is out of focus, he is silhouetted. Like the ghost of Veronica's victim, the boy gazes at

Veronica and walks out of the room. In the next scene, the film will show that the boy is another

member of the family. However, in this scene, because of the framing, the spectator does not know

that there is a third person in the room.

Figure M. Figure N.

The seventh shot (figure M): the mother.

The eight shot (figure N) is a medium shot of Veronica sitting on the bed from different

angle. Suddenly, there are human's hands emerge into the frame. Like Veronica, the spectator does

not know who the man is. On one hand, it can be interpreted that he is a family member. On the

other hand, it emphasizes the power of the offscreen, and the angle that his hands touch Veronica's
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neck is similar to the way one strangles or beheads the other – the film's motif reappears.

On one hand, this analysis can explain how Martel makes the audience identified with

Veronica, partially because of the haunting power of the offscreen spaces. As Pascal Bonitzer

(1971-1972: 16 cited in Saxton, 2008: 104) states, 'The cinematic images is haunted by what isn't

there.' On the other hand, it can be seen that there is no point-of-view shot at all. In this film, the

point-of-view shot is used only one time in the accident scene. Since most of the shots are not

subjective, the spectator still has their own space to think.

Figure O.

For the blurred texture which signifies the film's theme, Martel does not use only the

shallow focus, but also the props, such as water drops on the car's window, and smoky glass door, to

create the same effect. The technique is striking in the last scene, which features only two shots

(Figure O, P). The first shot features a smoky glass door. Behind the door is a space of the

bourgeoisie. The hole between the doors signifies the spectator's experience – we have gazed into
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the life of the guilt-denial bourgeoisie. The final shot of the film is a long take. By shooting through

Figure P.

the glass, Veronica's body is blurred. She is blended with the bourgeoisie perfectly. However, if one

can forget even their own guilt, one might be able to forget one's own identity, like the evaporated

body of Veronica.

Disavowal and Meaning

In this section I want to illuminate the film's form and meaning with Sigmund Freud's

concept of 'disavowal'. There are three layers of disavowal that can be read here.

For the first layer, disavowal is the foundation of film's spectatorship. In apparatus theory,

Jean Louis Comolli uses the term to explain the delusional condition of the mind when spectator

watches the screen. To watch a cinema, 'the spectator is anyhow well aware of the artifice but
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he/she prefers all the same to believe in it' (Comolli, 1980: 113 cited in Aaron, 2007: 11). This

means that although the spectator knows that what on screen is not true, the spectator still convinces

him/herself to believe that it is true.

For the second layer, this terminology can be used to explain this film's narrative too. The

root of disavowal can be traced back to Sigmund Freud's work. Though the term appears in the later

phrase in Freud's work, he developed the concept earlier from his clinical practice that he found 'the

little boy’s refusal to recognize the absence of a penis in a little girl' (Penot, 2005: 415). It is a

natural condition for the boys in phallic period. However, if one still carries such act into adulthood,

'it could lead to psychosis' (ibid.). Later, he used the term to compare a case of two young men in

denial of their dead fathers to the fetishists who disavowed women's castration. Like these cases, the

film shows the process of Veronica's disavowal. Despite the fact she knows that she killed the boy,

she disavows it in the end.

For the third layer, disavowal does not happen to Veronica only, but this is a political

statement from Lucrecia Martel to her country. To look for the symptomatic meaning2, The

Headless Woman manifests the social ideology of Argentina as a state of disavowal. Martel publicly

states3 that the film is referred to the current bourgeoisie who intentionally forget the fact that many

people, especially from the lower class, disappeared without a trace under the dictatorship in

Argentina during the 1970s. Since the film does not mention the exact time, it can be interpreted

from the costumes that the story probably happens sometime between the 1970s and the 2000s.

Moreover, in my point of view, the film's meaning is universal. The narrative and style create a

model that still works in other nations' contexts. The bourgeoisie's disavowal does not take place

only in Argentina, but all over the world.

2 See David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction 8th edn (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2008),
pp. 62-63
3 See Demetrios Matheou, 'Vanishing Point' in Sight and Sound, March 2010, pp. 28 – 32
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To conclude, I have shown the film's narrative and how Martel uses the style distinctively

and hauntingly to create the film form and a particular mode of spectatorship. Moreover, I have

linked the concept of disavowal to illuminate the film's meaning. Though Martel states4 that she

does not want to show the psychology of the character, it is a role for the scholars to interpret it and

here I have already explained how the film form, the spectatorship and disavowal are intertwined

with one another, uniquely.

4 Ibid.
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Bibliography

Aaron, Michele, Spectatorship : The Power of Looking On (London : Wallflowers Press, 2007),

chapters 1 and 2

Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction 8th edn (Boston, MA: McGraw-

Hill, 2008), chapters 2, 3 and 6

Falicov, Tamara L., The Cinematic Tango : Contemporary Argentine Film (London : Wallflower

Press, 2007), pp. 124-126, 140-143

Gibbs, John, Mise-en-Scene : Film Style and Interpretation (London : Wallflower Press, 2002)

Matheou, Demetrios, 'Vanishing Point' in Sight and Sound, March 2010, pp. 28 – 32

Penot, Bernard, 'Disavowal' in International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, ed by Alain de Mijolla

(USA : Thompson Gale, 2005) pp. 415-417

Saxton, Libby, 'Close Encounters with Distant Suffering: Michael Haneke's Disarming Visions' in

Five Directors : Auteurism from Assayas to Ozon, ed. by Kate Ince (UK, Manchester : Manchester

University Press, 2008) pp. 84-111

Shaw, Deborah, 'Introduction : Latin American Cinema Today' in Contemporary Latin American

Cinema : Breaking into the Global Market, ed. by Shaw (USA, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield,

2007) pp. 1-10

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Illustrations

The Headless Woman. Dir. Lucrecia Martel. New Wave Films, 2008 [on DVD].