La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman)

It is difficult to think of any adjectives that describe this film, all we can really tell you is what it is not. It is not easy, it is not linear, it is not readable, it is not explainable, or even at times entirely coherent. Despite this, we are very happy to have sat through its short running time.
Here's an effort to recreate the feeling of the film; a hand held just inches from the mouth, so breathing is impaired and only become worse, but never enough to quite be noticed. The first shot is fast moving, a wonderful piece of camerawrk, but from then on the camera is at once still and decentered, not letting us in and at once making us culpable for what has happened. The screen is split, often beautifully so (if that is the right word). Indeed, the whole film is shot in an odd, disconsertingly beautiful manner, though never to the extent that it interrupts or makes explicit its stylistic pretensions. The finest example is the shooting of the placid central actress. She is cut off as a character and in the shooting, with people and objects coming between here and us to veil and hide. The repeated motif, never obvious but frequently there, is the shot of her ('haunting' seems too crude'), of just her body, head cut from frame, her square body like a puppet with some odd irrational, placid spirit running through. It is memorable.
It's a tough line between enigmatic, deep, unexplainable meaning and metaphors, and pretentious guff. This film does brilliantly to stay firmly on the former side, never descending to artifice as its use of everyday dialogue (nearly overheard), domestic props and little conversations all add up to the unexaplined atmosphere. Mundanity isn't the word, but the seeming everydayness of the actions makes it understandable that it becomes a little boring at times. However, laying too thickly on the atmospherics would dillute this films singularity in both creating a mood, and having no mood to speak of.
All these gnomic points basically are saying that this is a film where nothing happens, or at least what does happen is overwhelmed but what doesn't (or mainly doesn't). It is a film that is curious, and though not exactly entertaining, is undoubtedly worth seeing.