THE HEADLESS WOMAN directed by Lucrecia Martel (Argentina, 2008)
Suspense, suspicion, guilt, crisis of identity and paranoia were all vital ingredients in Alfred Hitchcock’s most memorable movies. The Headless Woman (La Mujer Sin Cabeza) contains all of these but in a deliberately reduced, even sedated, form and the one vital element that is absent is a crime.
The story revolves totally around a blonde woman (played by María Onetto) who is convinced she has killed a young boy in a car accident. Whether this happened or not remains one of a number of ambiguities in this fascinating film. Continue reading
A movie that traumatised me as a child was one where the lead character (Gregory Peck) has a phobia about seeing sets of parallel lines against a white background. I found something chilling about simple images (fork marks on a table cloth – the design on bedsheets) setting off a traumatic reaction. The cause of this paranoia is only clear at the end. It was only years after first seeing the movie (from behind the sofa) at the age of about seven that I identified it as Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound.
