Two by Lucrecia Martel
This pair of exquisitely allusive portraits shows the Argentine master reckoning with denial and failure. Martel’s psychological study in culpability, The Headless Woman, plumbs the depths of human nature, as well as questions of class, race, and Argentine identity. In her hugely acclaimed follow-up, Zama, a Spanish royal functionary flounders in 18th-century South America, where the iniquities and absurdities of colonialism are on parade.
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Zama
Directed by Lucrecia Martel | 115 mins | 2017
A scruffy bureaucrat for the Spanish crown hopelessly angles for ways to get ahead in this audacious vision of 18th-century colonial empire, adapted from Antonio de Benedetto’s 1956 novel of the same name. Don Diego’s anti-epic progress in a far-flung... -
The Headless Woman
Directed by Lucrecia Martel | 89 mins | 2008
Martel’s haunting study of self-deception follows Veronica, a beloved but remote mother, after her car hits something in the road—or was it a person? As the stylish “Vero” (the late, great Maria Onetto) drifts in a daze among family and friends, the ur...
