A disquieting and unnerving viewing experience for me. Based on nightmares the director herself had, this feels more like a horror film than most despite being grounded in an art cinema framework, where one is stuck with the main character in her trauma, with claustrophobic framing of scenes and unsettlingly vivid diegetic sound. The result is a masterpiece for me that will divide people greatly.

Martel is a very minor art-filmmaker. Not especially insightful, she exemplifies the second-rate aesthetics of underdeveloped cultures. Her over-subtle approach hides the superficiality of her dull, dull style.

Admirably made, but it certainly takes its time.

Martel continues to refine her impressive, enigmatic aesthetic, as well as her maddening penchant for go-nowhere half-allegories who's meanings escape me. Nonetheless this is her most impressive, formally assured work yet, at best baring more than a passing resemblance to Antonioni in form as well as content.

The cinematic tricks it attempts are very effective at presenting both the confusion of its lead character and the contrasts of living conditions in a flawed society. It says all it has to say in about 45 minutes, though, and by the end the curiosity gives way to annoyance at both the films slavish devotion to its method and the ultimately unsympathetic and underdeveloped characters.

The film was quite dull and I felt no connection to any of the characters, but when the film ended quite abruptly I did begin to question what had actually happened.

"Films that try to convey a state of disorientation live and die by their central metaphors, and the one that lends Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman its title is certifiably lame." - Akiva Gottlieb

A few scenes hit their mark and create a strange captivating tension (the accident and firefighters on the bridge especially), but the rest is too understated. Class issues and parenting are brought up but never explored. Characters are never developed. Not holding the audience's hand is a good thing, but this is too fractured to be effective. There is some pretty good acting, even if the actors aren't given a lot.

Immensely boring film about the psychological effects of an accident, starring a bony and not likeable actress whose performance would have befitted an Eric Rohmer zombie film. There was one nicely-shot scene, in which tension is built up by sticking the camera in the back seat of this dangerous-driving woman's SUV. The rest of the film was like watching paint dry. A lot of pointless scenes which didn't advance the story, develop characters or express a theme or motif. Stunningly ineffectual.

Immediately throwing its audience into a tangle of interpersonal relationships and spelling out nothing, The Headless Woman can be difficult. Yet its abrupt, disorienting cadences capture its subject's tunnel vision and fundamental disconnect. As her anxieties that she hit a person grow, it appears she finally grows privy to the system of privilege that keeps her life afloat but the blurry impressionism of the parting shot questions if anything is actually clearer.

it's easy to excuse the film's unnatural symbolic straining as it does reflect its central protagonist's plight. but as far as i'm concerned 'intentionally disconnecting' as it applies here is synonymous with 'intentionally bad', preventing you from mustering any interest even as you're given an authentic representation of her mental state. i suggest it's impossible to enjoy this film for anything more than its unity of form and content, its craft. willing to be convinced otherwise though.

Lucrecia Martel in the interviews told it's her clearest film. I am even afraid to think about her confusing films! It is filled with long scenes of trivial everyday activities that I could no way see anyhow significant to the story. No characters are introduced, and they all, except the protagonist, are just passers by. That makes films really boring, and even at the runtime of 90min it drags. I understand what idea director wanted to present, but the way it is done is simply bad.

It has a rather intriguing premise, one that involves delving into deep recesses of the mind of a woman who is unsure if she ran over a dog or a boy and is too paralyzed by her fears to actually take action and find out. This could have been a psychological masterpiece. Instead, it feels too disjointed and emotionally distant. Simply, this is one of those audacious experimental films that doesn't quite work.

Leaving the cinema I liked it but was underwhelmed. Since then it has grown for me. It burrows in to your head and festers there. What did happen? you ask yourself time and time again, running through all the details over and over. Personally I found them contradictory and yet for that very reason all the more intriguing, all the more enraging, and all the more making me want to return to see what I missed.

The strengths here are formal more than narratival. That Martel is able to use the technical aspects of the film (abrupt and elliptical edits, darkness, and the positioning of the actors) to mimic her storyline shows a special accomplishment. That said, I found the film difficult to connect with, as its central protagonist remains so far removed, not just from us, but from everyone in her life.

Has a very interesting beginning and first third as we put together the pieces of a mystery. Then the film shifts gears and plods along as we are introduced to the protagonist's privileged upper middle class existence. The film starts to waver and fall apart because it tries to be deep through showing the disparity between class in society but it just ends up a mess. By the end we are left with a jumbled ambiguous conclusion that is neither profound nor well conceived.