La mujer sin cabeza

A middle-aged woman is driving on the highway. She becomes distracted and runs over something. It could have been anything. A dog, a child or something else. Shocked, she drives on, but on the days following this incident, she fails to recognise the feelings that bond her to things and people. She just lets herself be taken by the events of her social life. One night she tells her husband that she killed someone on the highway. They go back to the road only to find a dead dog. Friends close to the police confirm that there were no accident reports. Everything returns to normal and the bad moment seems to be over until the news of a gruesome discovery again worries everyone.
With her unusual talent in dissecting suppressed emotions and their social context, Martel focuses on an event that makes a crack in the existing world, in a manner of speaking. With a frighteningly intimate, formal approach and above all through the stunning soundtrack, the viewer is slowly but surely introduced to a life in which something goes gruesomely wrong. In the beautiful details of the world around the protagonist, hence in the out-of-focus background, the worrying social message of the film can be read. Because somewhere, someone has to pay the price for denial, silence and repression. (GT)