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Headless Woman, The

EMAILPRINTStrand Releasing

Headless Woman, The reviews
81
7.0 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Mystery  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Lucrecia Martel

Directed by: Lucrecia Martel

Release Date:
Theatrical: August 19, 2009
DVD: December 15, 2009

Running Time: 87 minutes, Color

Origin: Argentina | France | Italy | Spain

Language(s): Spanish

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Maria Onetto, Claudia Cantero, Ines Efron, Daniel Genoud, and Cesar Bordon

A mysterious and intriguing tale of a woman who may have killed someone or something while driving on a dirt road. Dazed and confused, she tries to piece together what happened, while her husband systematically tries to erase her tracks. (Strand Releasing)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Brilliant, maddeningly enigmatic puzzle of a movie.

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100

Time Out New York Keith Uhlich

No simplistic status parable. It’s more a psychological snapshot of a person forever doomed to remain a voyeur to her own life

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100

San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson

Martel's vision is so visually rich and complex it borders on the impressionistic, but The Headless Woman would be nowhere without the precise tour de force performance by Onetto.

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91

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

A remarkably nuanced, ever-evolving performance (María Onetto).

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80

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Guilt and alienation from Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, so arty, enervated, and allegorical it might have been made by a European in the early sixties.

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80

Village Voice J. Hoberman

As dense and fluid as Martel's movie is, the viewer--like the protagonist--is compelled to live in the moment. And a rich moment it is.

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70

Variety Leslie Felperin

A simpler and more taut, if slightly less interesting version of the oblique but mesmerizing studies of family life in fetid, hothouse atmospheres the Argentine helmer offered up in "La cienaga" and "The Holy Girl."

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70

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Not the supernatural horror picture its title suggests, but this subtle, elliptical film evokes its own kind of nightmarish situation.

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50

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

As promising as the premise sounds, it cannot rise from the mundane.

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25

Christian Science Monitor Andy Klein

The disjointedness of The Headless Woman might be the result of narrative complexity or of directorial ineptitude or (my favorite) of narrative complexity mangled by directorial ineptitude. If the residual fog ever clears, maybe I'll be able to tell you for sure.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Daniel P. gave it a5:
The film have an interesting story but the way that Lucrecia made the movie is a little boring and got short key parts.

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