As a companion piece to my Q&A transcript of the La Ciénaga screening at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts earlier this summer, I offer the subsequent evening’s conversation regarding La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman) between filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and cultural critic B. Ruby Rich. This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary.
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By way of introduction to The Headless Woman, B. Ruby Rich took a count of how many people in the audience had seen Martel’s previous films and—discovering most of us had—she congratulated us and said she would reassure Martel that we were “worthy.”
Ruby first met Lucrecia in 2001 at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. She had the pleasure of writing a big piece on her for Arts & Leisure in the Sunday New York Times that she had hoped would be a helpful breakthrough for Lucrecia and her film. Ruby’s article had the perfect mid-September position in the paper; but, it turned out that the Sunday after 9/11 was not the perfect time for forming or launching a career, or opening a film in New York. The film was jinxed. Thus, for Ruby it’s been fantastic to see Lucrecia’s latest film The Headless Woman having the opposite kind of luck.
“As you know since you know her work,” Ruby reminded us, “you need to surrender yourself to the experience; you need to surrender yourself to her vision of what life is like and how we perceive it. If you do that, you’ll be fine.”
Preparing her research for the evening, Ruby was amused by a YouTube clip she found of the opening introduction for the film’s premiere at the New York Film Festival. Lisa Schwarzbaum introduced the film, talked about how wonderful it was, and brought Lucrecia Martel up to the stage—who, Ruby added as an aside, was wearing “a fabulous dress”—and Lucrecia, in turn, brought up the Almodóvar Brothers. Pedro Almodóvar stepped up to speak and spoke for so long that they finally gave him the hook. Lucrecia never got to say a word. Thus, Ruby felt the perfect introduction to The Headless Woman was to repeat what Almodóvar recommended to the audience at Lincoln Center: “Be patient. Try to digest it. It’s the kind of movie that stays in your mind. And when you are dreaming tonight, the movie will stay with you like a partner who will snuggle up to you and hold you and whose hugs and kisses will lead to a lot of questions and, perhaps, anxieties.”
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After the film, Ruby asked Martel to talk about the film’s title—which has been translated as The Headless Woman, but which actually means something more like The Woman Who Lost Her Head—and asked if it mattered to Lucrecia that there were two potentially different titles? Did she have the title in mind when she started the film? In general, does she come up with her titles first or do they come to her while making the film?
Though never paying much attention to the titles of her films, Martel admitted some concern that they sound too much like lurid B-movies: The Swamp, The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman. Ruby suggested that maybe Martel should market her movies with pulpy paperback versions?
Ruby observed that—in almost every Q&A where Martel’s interacted with her audience, or in interviews she’s read—Martel is always asked how much of a role improvisation plays in her films. Yet, Rich is aware that Martel does not improvise while filming and that her films follow their scripts closely. So she wondered why Martel is always asked this question? What it is in her films that gives her audiences the impression that the scripts are improvised and that the actors are making it up as they go along?
“I don’t know,” Martel smiled, “I thought you had an answer.” She looks for good actors and likes it when the actor’s tone is natural, and perhaps audiences get that impression as well because she doesn’t use a lot of close-ups, which makes their performances more casual and informal.
Ruby asked Martel to talk about her distinct usage of audio and visual focus. Martel replied: “As a matter of fact, what I have already very clearly set out is the soundtrack. I already know what the soundtrack is going to be right off the bat. That allows me to save a lot of money because I do very few takes of a scene. A lot of scenes are unnecessary. You save a lot because a lot of the images become sound. Even though I don’t really think about the frames before the film starts, I do think about the focus. I’m talking about focus in terms of the images. That allows me to build a scene in depth. I do have to think about it quite a bit. The system that I use for making films is a layered system. When I build the script, there is this mixture of the sound, which comes together with the focus. This system that I use is very similar to the sound mix.”
Ruby then queried after the songs Martel used in the film, especially when the main character Verónica (María Onetto) is in the car before and after the accident. Ruby wondered what these songs meant to Martel personally and to the Argentine people generally?
Martel admitted to The Headless Woman’s anachronisms. This phenomenon of not wanting to know, not wanting to find out, was part of Argentina during the dictatorship between the mid-‘70s and the ‘80s. This device of not wanting to know and not wanting to find out, this denial among the middle class of what was happening to others, to people who were really having a bad time, was a mechanism of denial that, Martel asserted, is still very much in existence in Argentine society, in any society. She identified this as the film’s aesthetic anachronism: the songs that you hear in the film are the songs you would have heard on the radio in the late ‘70s.
Noting the production credits of the Almodóvar Brothers on The Holy Girl and, now, The Headless Woman, Ruby couldn’t stop imagining the difference between The Headless Woman and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Though the films couldn’t be more different, Verónica is suffering a nervous breakdown in her own way, though less externalized and comic than Women on the Verge. Ruby admired that Martel was trying to depict this “bourgeoise amnesia and the way in which it works politically.” Known more for her acting ensembles, Ruby asked at what point Martel decided to focus on one character’s experience of a seemingly simple occurrence?
Martel answered: “I’ve always been terrified of being responsible for somebody’s death.” She recounted a dream she’d had about an actor who helped her a great deal making a short feature film. In the dream, she was saying good-bye to this actor. As he was leaving her house, she was thinking about how nice he had been, how much he had helped her, when all of a sudden this stick by the television set let out a loud pinging noise. It disoriented her. Then the dream cut to a change of scene where a very weird thing happened. A body came apart and there was a detached head that she didn’t know what to do with. She put the head away in a cabinet in her house and went off to the university worrying that her father might find the head in the cabinet. When she was going to the university her father frequently flew in from Salta, which was quite far away, and they would meet until he left on an afternoon flight. In the dream she thought, “Oh my God, he’s going to come to the apartment and find that head.” Rather than being comic, this prospect was horrifying. Then the dream cut again, she returned from the university, and her apartment was impeccable, though there was a note on the table where her father had written: “I’ve straightened out the kitchen cabinet. I hope that you’re all right. We’ll see each other soon.” She immediately went to the cabinet. Her father—who was a skillful handyman—had created a false backing to the cabinet, hiding the head by eliminating the cabinet’s depth and making it impossible to put much away. She woke up anxious and crying, worrying that no one was ever going to talk to her about this and that she would have to carry this heavy load by herself always.
Martel admitted this is something that worries her—not so much any element from the dream—but, the idea that years of education, years of investment both private and public, aimed to make us better people and more sensitive to other people’s pain, doesn’t accomplish its objective. As educated people, we’re aware of our failure to take any action that truly changes the suffering of others. This is especially noticeable in the provinces where the separation, the exclusion, between social classes is most evident.
Ruby asked her if—when she woke up from this nightmare—she cut and dyed her hair blonde? No, Martel laughed, but she did comb her hair. As for Verónica cutting and dyeing her hair blonde, that was Martel’s conscious homage to Kim Novak. One of Verónica’s hair-dos was specifically inspired by Kim Novak in Vertigo and, Martel added, it felt good to be able to admit this in San Francisco.
Ruby observed that it seemed there were many levels operating simultaneously in The Headless Woman. On the one hand, the film focuses on one person’s reaction to something terrible that has happened or that might have happened, and the consequent guilt. On the other hand, the film is about a cover-up. It’s about a social class that expresses affection for its members in a problematic way. “In all of your films there are these simultaneous levels,” Rich opined, “of things that are very personal and—at the same time—wedded to the social complexity of the class.” Rich wondered how much of her films are viewed by Argentine audiences in terms of the characters and how much in terms of these larger criticisms of social class? She wondered how Martel’s films were interpreted by Argentines?
Some Argentines have observed the links and made a connection between the film’s story and Argentina’s recent dictatorship. Some of the ways the men are dressed remind them of events during the dictatorship when people “disappeared.” But there’s a problem in such opinions and how they promote the film as a metaphor for the dictatorship. Her intention was to spend the time of the film within Verónica’s head gauging her perception of events. Ruby agreed that the film succeeded in keeping audiences inside Verónica’s head, but also in her ears. She ventured that Martel’s facility for allowing an intimacy between a character and the audience is frequently achieved through sound. It seemed to Ruby that Martel asked her audience to participate and make sense of Verónica’s experience. Aware that Martel has a great love for genre, horror movies and thrillers—the very grade-B movies she referenced earlier—Ruby offered that she considered The Headless Woman as a kind of thriller and horror movie, both of which rely on their soundtracks. They rely on music that puts the audience within the frame. Ruby asked if Martel was cognizant of these similarities?
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do love the horror genre,” Martel agreed. “They do use sound sometimes for pure effect and they pay attention to the construction of sound spaces. Sound is very important for me. When you’re learning about filmmaking, the approach usually is about image, how to build the image with the eye of the camera, etc. But the truth is that it’s sound that goes straight through to the viewer. Sound is the only thing the viewer cannot prevent from entering his consciousness. Eyelids can help you block out images and—though hearing can block out high frequencies—it cannot stop perception, precisely because of this particular trait of sound: it touches the body of the viewer. Not just hearing but the entire body is touched by sound. This particular quality in which the viewer is immersed becomes like an addictive fluid. Cinema, for me, is a great deal like a swimming pool. The viewer is immersed in sound and air so—of all the elements a filmmaker has to build a film—sound surrounds the viewer. Images can be suggestive but their power relies on what’s not shown in its entirety.”
Respectful of Martel’s love for horror films, Rich admitted she has never been able to watch them due to a childhood trauma she didn’t have time to get into. But suffice it to say that she didn’t begin watching horror films until they came out on video and DVD. It was only then she could lower the volume and watch the visuals, aware that—yes—sound had everything to do with the experience of the genre.
Picking up on the comment that Martel thinks of cinema as a swimming pool, Rich asked her what was up with the swimming pools? “There are certain things that recur—swimming pools, we could ask you also about hospitals, about girls with impossible crushes—but, to start with, what about swimming pools?”
From a sensory point of view, Martel replied, she is fascinated with water, like everybody else; but, she is particularly irritated—especially in a city like her’s that has problems with water shortages—when during the summer some neighborhoods have no water because other neighborhoods need the water to fill up their swimming pools. The whole idea of building a private paradise with water, which we all know is scarce and precious, is akin to what used to happen in the 17th and 18th centuries when it was considered quite natural for Dutch families to own a Black slave. Two hundred years later, of course, we think of slavery as barbaric; but, by the same token, two hundred years from now, or less, the thought of using gallons and gallons of water to fill up a swimming pool for the luxury of a family will be accurately seen as quite selfish. That’s why, Martel furthered, she is in favor of public pools, even though personally she never goes into swimming pools. She admitted to being put off by finding hair in the water and sun tan lotion floating on the surface and couldn’t stop imagining all the dead skin cells in the water. The clearer, the bluer, the more transparent the water is, the more she suspects it, preferring to swim in lakes or rivers.
At this juncture B. Ruby Rich opened the conversation up to the audience and I mentioned how fascinating I found the character of Verónica because, in gist, I didn’t really like her, though I wanted to like her. I was repulsed by her sense of denial, but was hopeful for her when she started to question herself. But I was most intrigued at the point where she began resisting the cover-up engineered by her husband and cousin. She seemed intent on recovering and making public the clues to her own crime. For me, she seemed to have lost her identity at that point. I asked Martel what she intended by having Verónica resist the cover-up?
Martel answered that the phenomena that arises when a person is unwilling to be accountable is that they’re forced into forgetfulness and oblivion. “Fortunately, when you try to forget something that has happened in your life, you don’t have selective memory to do away with just one event; you forget everything that surrounds it and everything that is associated with it in time. So it seems to me that a woman who’s trying to transform a period or a series of moments in her life to move them into oblivion, what’s happening is that she’s actually moving herself into forgetfulness. Such a woman, without articulation, will fall apart. She’s going to end up being in worse shape than she is.”
One fellow was struck with how naturally Martel depicted the seamless interaction between classes, how the upper classes took no notice of their servants who were simply understood as competent and organized, while they themselves were confused and self-obsessed. Without drawing attention to it, he was impressed with how Martel showed an upper class rendering their servants invisible and he wondered if this was truly reflective of Argentine life? If so, would Argentines recognize it? Would they identify with it?
“It’s like everywhere,” Martel responded. “Some people do and some people don’t.” She conjectured that probably this is why her films are not popular in Argentina. It’s not that her films are complex; it’s that fewer people choose to identify with them. Every time she makes a movie, she thinks it’s going to be a big success and it’s not. Some Argentines are not used to seeing her kind of cinema so they’re not going to be attracted to her films; but, others who are familiar with this kind of cinema and are in the habit of watching such films, they will be attracted to and identify with her films.
“If I could just add to that,” Ruby interjected, “I think we’re used much more to a Masterpiece Theatre Upstairs Downstairs model. But The Headless Woman is not Upstairs Downstairs. These worlds are right next to each other on parallel tracks.” What’s even more fascinating than the upper classes rendering their servants invisible, Ruby added, is that Martel allows the audience to see a little bit of their world and to hear some of the things they’re saying. The audience listens to them in a way their employers are not listening to them and what becomes evident is that, yes, indeed, they are the ones who are competent and make everything work. They cover for these out-of-control members of the bourgeoisie. “The critique is much more subtle than we’re used to seeing and yet it’s right before our eyes; we have to be willing to see it or not; to hear it or not.”
Asked what the biggest challenge was making The Headless Woman, Martel replied it was having a main character. In her other films, different characters play the protagonist. She didn’t know if she was going to get bored shooting one person. That’s why it was important to cast the perfect actress in the role and, concomitantly, why it was difficult to find her. In tandem with her homage to Kim Novak, Martel wanted a woman who stood out from others—not just because she was tall and white, with blonde hair that looked good on her—but whose body stood out in relation to the people around her in a town where the population was primarily indigenous; a body whose actions couldn’t be hidden.
This description reminded YBCA programmer Joel Shepard of Gena Rowlands, which motivated Martel to discuss John Cassavetes: “He’s an extraordinary director, as far as I’m concerned. I’m really surprised that a lot of people in the American film industry don’t know Cassavetes. In fact, I was amazed (but I won’t name names). Love Streams moves me deeply because it feels like it has something to do with my family; it’s that intimate.”
One woman felt all the kissing and touching in the film was suffocating. She thought that Verónica’s clandestine affair with her cousin was going to somehow impact her situation more. Martel commented: “The idea is that she doesn’t really know exactly because she’s in that detached state. It’s not that she has amnesia; it’s something different. For example, after an accident—at least it’s been in my experience—you forget the relationship to other people. You forget some of those things. It’s a self-forgetfulness. You know who these people are but you forget your relationship to them. I wanted to put the character in that particular state; but, in terms of developing it further, it did not come up when I was writing the script that her relationship with her cousin would have any bearing.”
Ruby suggested such “permeable boundaries” could be seen in all of Martel’s films. People have relationships—whether incestuous or promiscuous—without any seeming boundaries to prevent them. Desire is unrestricted and fluid. “Bodies cannot be managed by words,” Martel responded and added that she finds it extremely funny when social classes close in onto themselves. Her grandmother was married to her cousin and Martel suspected that was where the idea originally came from. These things just happen in these status areas that are closed off in the provinces.
One fellow recognized how difficult the role of Verónica must have been for María Onetto. He saw Verónica as empty, “a social position without much back story.” He was curious how Martel directed Onetto to create a specificity to Verónica’s character even though the script doesn’t grant her much agency? “If you met the actress,” Martel said, “you would discover her potential. She couldn’t express a lot. The actress herself is mysterious. She has a surprising way as far as I’m concerned of conveying [her concerns]. What she was doing was special.”
A young woman was curious if the character of the Great Aunt with her dementia was another conscious allusion to forgetfulness? Why did Martel include that character? “Our perception is educated,” Martel argued. “Sometimes extreme events disorient the body so that you perceive something different. For instance, infidelity is a kind of trauma that destroys and distorts the perception you had hitherto of the world. As a phenomenon, infidelity is much more philosophical than it’s given credit. The same thing occurs with the nearness of death and illness. In the feverish state of illness, for example, you can perceive things differently. It just so happens that a lot of members of my family are insane. [Laughs.] Nonetheless, there are sparks of lucidity that allow me to get close to them.”
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The Headless Woman will be screening as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s Kabuki Screen on September 18-24, 2009.
09/03/09 UPDATE: Of related interest, Amy Taubin’s Film Comment interview with Martel.
Cross-published on Twitch.
In yet another masterful programming coup, Joel Shepard scores one for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts with—not only the Bay Area premiere of Lucrecia Martel's latest film The Headless Woman—but a retrospective of her earlier films La Ciénaga and Holy Girl with Martel present at both La Ciénaga (in conversation with her audience) and The Headless Woman (in conversation with B. Ruby Rich). Both evenings of her on-stage appearances sold out in advance and—judging by last night's enthused audience for La Ciénaga—her Bay Area appearance marks a singularly-anticipated event for a veritable who's who of San Franciscan cinephiles. This is one of those in-cinema experiences buttressed by its social texture in which I am delighted to have taken part.
After confessing he has seen La Ciénaga four times and aware that Martel based the story on memories of her own family, Joel Shepard kicked off the questioning by enquiring what Martel's family thought of her highly personal debut feature?
"There are several versions," Martel quipped. Before the film was finished, Martel showed her brothers a VHS version. They reacted that no one would understand the film because it was more like a home video of their family. Her great uncle—on whom she based the character of Gregorio (Martín Adjemián), husband to Mecha (Graciela Borges)—claimed not to understand anything in the film, to which his wife objected, "What do you mean you don't understand anything? You're just like Gregorio." Although the character was based on her great uncle—who Adjemián never met—her great uncle's wife recognized her husband in the actor's performance. As for her mother, she thinks Martel is the best director in the world.
Noting that each of her films contain complex—sometimes overwhelming—sound designs, Shepard wondered if Martel thought of the visuals and the sound separately when developing a film?
With La Ciénaga, Martel wasn't quite sure what her system would be since she'd not had much experience making cinema. Having never attended film school, she had no awareness of a working method. Martel qualified that she did achieve some schooling but wasn't able to carry through due to problems Argentina was facing at the time. That being said, when she conceives a film, sound precedes image. She based her dialogue on the oral sounds of family life; overheard phrases that are second nature to her. The sound design is thus already composed by the time she goes to the set to shoot the film. Although she doesn't know exactly how she's going to film things, the sound is already set.
Shepard suggested that repeated viewings of La Ciénaga have revealed its frequent comedy: Mecha is such a bizarre personality while Gregorio's personality is defined by how he dyes his hair. Tali (Mercedes Morán) becomes humorously obsessed with traveling to Bolivia. Not sure whether he was reading comedy into the film, he asked if Martel intended it?
Her family laughs a great deal when they watch the film, Martel replied, but she suspects the film's humor is provincial, and not necessarily funny to everyone.
Shepard shared some reviews he found of La Ciénaga that amused him for being obtuse. Entertainment Weekly claimed La Ciénaga "had too much integrity for its own good" and, elsewhere, one critic complained that Martel was asking way too much of her audience. Which led him to consider the larger issue of Martel's relationship to her audiences and if she thought about them while making her films?
Audiences are the only reason a filmmaker makes cinema, Martel insisted. However, you are born alone and you die alone in your own body. Love, conversation, language, sex: they're all attempts in some way to overcome so much loneliness. Cinema is a great opportunity—a possibility—for the viewer to immerse himself into the loneliness of the filmmaker's body in order to share it. Of course, it often happens that a viewer leaves a film without that happening; but, the intention is to have that happen. When that connection does happen, it's incredibly glorious. Sometimes that experience is a matter of seconds, and not the whole time of a film, which Martel has discovered through the comments made by her audiences where the point of relation is not inherent in the film itself, but the way the film reminds them of experiences they have had in their own lives.
As for the comment that she asks way too much of the viewer, Martel can accept the criticism, even as she understands that the viewer is sometimes prepared, sometimes not prepared for a demanding cinematic experience. Whether or not a viewer connects with her film has nothing to do with whether the film claims too much importance, or whether one viewer is more intelligent than another, or more interested in the film. The cinematic experience—favorable or disfavorable—is composed of mere moments.
Asked whether it was difficult to get La Ciénaga financed and produced, Martel admitted to extreme luck because Argentine producer Lita Stantic advised her to send the film to Sundance, which she did, and where she won the prize for best screenplay. This helped secure funding to complete the project. What was strange about Sundance was that they encouraged her to change the ending of her screenplay because—from the point of view of the jury—they saw the film as being about alcoholics and alcoholism. They suggested that the accident Mecha had at the very beginning should be at the end. Martel countered, "Well, maybe. But since the film is not about alcoholism, that's just the way it is."
Initially in 1997 she tried to finance the film with money from within Salta, the northwestern province of Argentina where she's from. She spent a lot of time in the city of Salta, capital of the province, trying to make arrangements with the bank and convincing investors to finance the film. In the meantime, she was also trying to do some casting in a garage that was close to her house. She interviewed people of all ages from 9:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night. She taped these interviews. As it turned out, the experience was extraordinary for her. The people she cast from those interviews in 1997 then took part when the film was shot in 1999. That's why she offered them thanks for their patience in the film's closing credits.
Respectful that Martel's script for La Ciénaga won the prize at Sundance, one fellow wondered how closely that script matched the final film? Especially with regard to the seemingly improvised performances of the children? On a related note, he wondered how Martel cast the children and how she worked with them to achieve such natural performances?
Martel assured the young man that the film looks a lot like the screenplay except for a few scenes that she had to cut out for budgetary reasons and length. As for her system with working with actors, Martel doesn't have one, claiming every actor is different. She can't have a single system to talk to such different people. But when working with actors, and especially children, she tries not to change the written lines. She leaves them alone and avoids improvisation because the writing itself is a complex process and a difficult balancing act so—to begin improvising on the script—would change the film too much. However, because some child actors are truly monsters, she doesn't show them the written lines. She tells them what to say. If she shows them the written lines, some child actors try too hard to memorize them and lose the natural quality in their acting. She talks to them about things that look and sound like the written words but avoids showing them the literal script.
It's a curious thing, Martel added, when you're trying to work with actors to film a scene and it doesn't come off natural. She realized that—if you're really paying attention to the graphic pauses in the text and how it relates to what's happening in the scene—the graphic pauses reproduce almost identically. So it's the use of the air in these pauses, the use of the space, that will achieve a natural effect. Actors are often not trained, however, to do that. It's especially difficult with children.
When she sought to cast the children, she tried different things to help them concentrate. There is a serious problem that develops between the time you write a script and when you go to cast it and then when you finally go to film it. The boy she cast for the role of the little boy had grown into a big boy by the time she got to filming. The secret to working with children and non-actors is to have a good relationship from the time you're casting. Casting, first of all, is not to try to find out talent—which many directors think is the case; they believe the actor has to do something—but rather, casting is more an opportunity to find out what you dare ask of somebody and what you're really trying to accomplish. Casting determines your own limitations as a director, whether you are prudish or courageous in what you ask of your actors.
As for images of children in film, Martel stressed that the word that ruins the image of a child is the whole idea of "innocence." Innocence doesn't mean anything. The idea of a child's innocence is an invention by adults to withstand the fact that a child has his own life, and often his own sexuality. Whenever Martel writes, she thinks about the fact that there is a mystery or a secret that she's not aware of. That's why in her films you only see fragments. She doesn't attempt to create psychological characters because then viewers start getting caught up in those ideas of innocence and purity.
Martel was asked if she performed her own cinematography? She replied that, of course, she framed the shots but the actual camera work was done by the extraordinary director of photography Hugo Colace.
The narrative traction of La Ciénaga is unique for not depending upon standard resolution. Notwithstanding its irresolute aesthetic, the movie compellingly moves forward. One young man wanted to know how Martel accomplished that?
La Ciénaga, Martel explained, as well as her other two films are based on a traditional oral structure. Conversation is a perfect example and, specifically, a conversation with her mother. After 40 minutes of talking on the phone—in which she and her mother discuss everything—Martel still doesn't know what her mother is trying to tell her. But when the conversation is over and Martel asks herself what it was about, she comes to a gradual understanding of how all that has been said ties together. Though she loves this way of working, it is—of course—problematic when it comes to marketing a film because audiences like to have tidy resolutions to their films. Then they would be able to recommend the film to their friends. Often, she has had viewers admit after seeing one of her films that they didn't really like it only to have them advise a few weeks later that—after sitting with the film—they really liked it; but, by then, the film is out of the theaters so they can't recommend it to their friends. The structure of oral narrative is something we are all trained to do by the nature of sustaining a conversation. We all know how to keep each other talking in conversations that don't have a beginning, middle or end.
Curious about the presiding meaning of La Ciénaga, one fellow wondered if it had to do with Martel's previous statement about being born alone and dying alone and that existential wrestle with life? He wondered what world view she was trying to get across?
Martel explained that, for her, La Ciénaga is a film about abandonment; a human being abandoned by divinity, by God if you will. She conceded this was wholly a personal point of view. A lot of people who have seen the film think it is about decadence; whereas for Martel, decadence is what gives her the most hope in this world. Anyway, the happiest parts of the film are about decadence.
Questioned about the sensual relationships between José (Juan Cruz Bordeu) and his cousins, and whether this denotes an ease in Argentine familial relations where siblings are more relaxed with each others' nudity, Martel joked that, unfortunately, when we think about Latinos, we think about Jennifer Lopez and reggaeton. That's the fantasy of the Latin body that satisfies gringo desire. As far as Martel is concerned, desire within a family is something that circulates, rather than being concentrated or personified in any single individual, object or action. Martel qualified that—with concern to this topic—she prefers not to say everything she thinks because she knows that a lot of people have lived through heartbreaking situations in such environments. Yet it seems to her that desire always overflows and goes beyond the norm. In other environments we have words to articulate concepts of desire; but, it's complicated within the family environment.
Intrigued by Martel's earlier statement that she approaches her filmmaking as if there is a mystery or a secret that she's unaware of, I ventured that the image of the steer stuck in the film's titular swamp likewise holds some kind of profound secret for me, especially because the children are obsessed with tormenting it in its misery. If, as she stated earlier, La Ciénaga is about the abandonment of divinity, I wondered if she was saying that—absent that divine impulse—humans are more susceptible to inherited notions of classism, racism and sexism, which the film observes unflinchingly? Do we get stuck in a place where—without inner wisdom—we rely on received and faulty knowledge?
Martel graciously offered that—when she writes—she tries to stay as far away from deliberate metaphors and symbols as possible; but, she understands that the need to create metaphors and symbols is a human way of amusing ourselves. She honestly—at least not consciously—didn't conceive of the steer stuck in the swamp as a metaphor for stagnation. With regard to abandonment by the divine, La Ciénaga ends before it becomes explicit that the only means of salvation is within and among ourselves. She understands that the viewer can relate this to the animal stuck in the swamp, but this was nothing she endeavored consciously or intentionally.
As for her next project, Martel has been writing an adaptation of a famous Argentine comic book regarding an alien invasion; but—since she doesn't know what's going to happen with that project—she's gone back to another topic, related to The Headless Woman, also within the fantastic genre. It's likewise about an alien invasion but the aliens are unknown relatives who invasively visit.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Norwegian Black Metal, Graphic Sexual Horror and a Headless Woman. Jeez, is it Halloween already? No, it's just this summer's insouciant film/video line-up at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. But before we dig into what curator Joel Shepard has in store through September, here's exciting news for YBCA filmgoers. Starting July 6, ticket holders will be allowed FREE admittance into YBCA's exhibition galleries, whose days and hours of operation have been adjusted to align with evening film and video screenings.
Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's Until the Light Takes Us (July 9 & 11) shines a torch on the stygian world of Norwegian Black Metal, a musical subgenre that grabbed headlines for inspiring a wave of murder, suicide and over 50 church burnings in the early '90s. The filmmakers were reluctantly introduced to the music by an insistent employee at San Francisco's Aquarius Records, which subsequently inspired them to spend two years in Norway gathering materials for this film. Moving from extreme music to extreme sexuality, the following weekend at YBCA brings us Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell's Graphic Sexual Horror (July 16 & 17). This documentary tells the story of Insex, a now-defunct BDSM website featuring exclusively female submissives that was also an early pioneer of internet video streaming and live feeds.
"Where is The Headless Woman?" That was the big question on the lips of Bay Area cinephiles when the latest from Argentine director Lucrecia Martel failed to make the line-up of this year's SF International Film Festival. We'd been lusting to see this film since its world premiere at Cannes last year. My anticipation became further heightened when it got ranked #1 on Film Comment's list of 20 Best Unreleased Films of 2008. Well, leave it to YBCA to end up bringing us not only the film, but the director as well, in a program titled Holy Girls and Headless Women: The Films of Lucrecia Martel. The ground-breaking director will appear at a screening of her 2001 debut feature La Ciénaga on July 14, followed by The Headless Woman on the following evening. Her second and middle feature, 2004's The Holy Girl will be shown on July 23 without the director in attendance (Martel accompanied the film to the SF International Film Festival in 2005).
Anyone who missed Chantal Akerman's revolutionary Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles when it screened at SF MOMA earlier this year, will get another chance on August 1 and 2. There may even be some repeat viewers—the SFMOMA screenings were marred by a missing second reel—replaced by a DVD at the first screening and 16mm at the second. This hypnotic, long (201-minute) 1975 film is considered one of the most important works in the history of cinema by many, and stars Delphine Seyrig as a middle-class widow and mother whose orderly universe s-l-o-w-l-y cracks apart.
Fewer things interest me less than sports, but I'm intrigued by several programs in Beyond ESPN: An Offbeat Look at the Sports Film. This month-long series, co-curated by Shepard and SF Bay Guardian Arts and Entertainment Editor Johnny Ray Huston, spans the full artsy to trashy gamut. Kicking off the series on August 6 is Rare Films from the Baseball Hall of Fame, followed by Jorgen Leth's A Sunday in Hell on August 9. Said to be the best film ever made about professional bicycle racing, Leth documented the grueling 1976 Paris-Roubaix race across northern France using 20 cameras and a helicopter. Contemporary audiences might know Leth best as the director assigned a series of wily filmmaking challenges by Lars Von Trier in 2003's The Five Obstructions.
Of all the films in the sports series, perhaps the one of most interest to cinephiles will be Claire Denis' 2005 never-seen-in-SF Towards Mathilde (August 13). Made in between L'intrus and 35 Shots of Rum, the film documents modern dance choreographer Mathilde Monnier as she creates a new work. The release of Criterion's Criteron's William Klein boxed-set last year generated renewed interest in the work of this American born and educated director who spent most of his career in France. He's represented in this series by The French (August 16), a documentary about the 1982 French Open tennis tournament in which Jimmy Connors, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe were participants (the film is not part of the Criterion set and is not available on DVD). Then on August 20 YBCA will screen Veronica Chen's visually striking Agua, an Argentine film set in the world of open water marathon swimming (specifically the 57-km Santa Fe-Cordoba river race.) The film appeared at the 2007 SF International Film Festival, and my review for The Evening Class can be found here.
Midnites for Maniacs—and its ebullient host Jesse Hawthorne Ficks—bring their swell act to YBCA on August 23, with Winning Isn't Everything: A Tribute to 1970s Sports Film. This triple-bill movie-marathon includes 1978 Robbie Benson-starring ice skating tear-jerker Ice Castles, Michael Ritchie's 1976 classic The Bad News Bears with Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal, and last but not least, The Cheerleaders, a 1973 exploitation film that threatens to reveal "everything you ever wanted to know about cheerleaders but were afraid to ask."
The final weekend of YBCA's sports series brings us two more classic, rarely seen documentaries. Visions of Eight (August 28) is an omnibus film centering on the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, with segments directed by Milos Forman, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Arthur Penn, John Schlesinger and others. Not too long ago, YBCA had a bona fide hit on its hands with numerous sold-out showings of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, which followed French soccer star Zinedine Zidane through one complete match. The film which did this first, however, was Hellmuth Costard's 1971 Football as Never Before (August 30). Using eight cameras, soccer legend George Best is trailed though a 1970 Manchester United First Division game. Interestingly, Spike Lee employs the same method in an upcoming documentary on Kobe Bryant.
Although not officially listed on YBCA's website yet, there are two important films I'm anticipating beyond the current calendar. On September 10, 12 and 13, YBCA revives Nicholas Ray's 1956 Bigger Than Life, in which James Mason is transformed from mild-mannered schoolteacher to deluded megalomaniac—courtesy of the modern miracle drug cortisone. Then on September 17, 19 and 20 we get to see another critically acclaimed Latin American film from 2008, Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool. This latest work from the Argentine minimalist director placed 10th on the aforementioned Film Comment list of Top 20 unreleased films, and was another surprise omission from this year's SFIFF. Hopefully YBCA will continue to focus on Latin American cinema, given the fact that we no longer have a Latino Film Festival here in the Bay Area. At the top of my wish list you'll find Pablo Larrain's Tony Manero (#9 on the Film Comment list) and Rodrigo Plá's Desert Within (winner of eight 2008 Mexican Ariel awards).
Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.
As a companion piece to my Q&A transcript of the La Ciénaga screening at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts earlier this summer, I offer the subsequent evening’s conversation regarding La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman) between filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and cultural critic B. Ruby Rich. This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary.
“As you know since you know her work,” Ruby reminded us, “you need to surrender yourself to the experience; you need to surrender yourself to her vision of what life is like and how we perceive it. If you do that, you’ll be fine.”
Ruby observed that—in almost every Q&A where Martel’s interacted with her audience, or in interviews she’s read—Martel is always asked how much of a role improvisation plays in her films. Yet, Rich is aware that Martel does not improvise while filming and that her films follow their scripts closely. So she wondered why Martel is always asked this question? What it is in her films that gives her audiences the impression that the scripts are improvised and that the actors are making it up as they go along?
Ruby then queried after the songs Martel used in the film, especially when the main character Verónica (María Onetto) is in the car before and after the accident. Ruby wondered what these songs meant to Martel personally and to the Argentine people generally?
Noting the production credits of the Almodóvar Brothers on The Holy Girl and, now, The Headless Woman, Ruby couldn’t stop imagining the difference between The Headless Woman and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Though the films couldn’t be more different, Verónica is suffering a nervous breakdown in her own way, though less externalized and comic than Women on the Verge. Ruby admired that Martel was trying to depict this “bourgeoise amnesia and the way in which it works politically.” Known more for her acting ensembles, Ruby asked at what point Martel decided to focus on one character’s experience of a seemingly simple occurrence?
Ruby observed that it seemed there were many levels operating simultaneously in The Headless Woman. On the one hand, the film focuses on one person’s reaction to something terrible that has happened or that might have happened, and the consequent guilt. On the other hand, the film is about a cover-up. It’s about a social class that expresses affection for its members in a problematic way. “In all of your films there are these simultaneous levels,” Rich opined, “of things that are very personal and—at the same time—wedded to the social complexity of the class.” Rich wondered how much of her films are viewed by Argentine audiences in terms of the characters and how much in terms of these larger criticisms of social class? She wondered how Martel’s films were interpreted by Argentines?
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do love the horror genre,” Martel agreed. “They do use sound sometimes for pure effect and they pay attention to the construction of sound spaces. Sound is very important for me. When you’re learning about filmmaking, the approach usually is about image, how to build the image with the eye of the camera, etc. But the truth is that it’s sound that goes straight through to the viewer. Sound is the only thing the viewer cannot prevent from entering his consciousness. Eyelids can help you block out images and—though hearing can block out high frequencies—it cannot stop perception, precisely because of this particular trait of sound: it touches the body of the viewer. Not just hearing but the entire body is touched by sound. This particular quality in which the viewer is immersed becomes like an addictive fluid. Cinema, for me, is a great deal like a swimming pool. The viewer is immersed in sound and air so—of all the elements a filmmaker has to build a film—sound surrounds the viewer. Images can be suggestive but their power relies on what’s not shown in its entirety.”
Picking up on the comment that Martel thinks of cinema as a swimming pool, Rich asked her what was up with the swimming pools? “There are certain things that recur—swimming pools, we could ask you also about hospitals, about girls with impossible crushes—but, to start with, what about swimming pools?”
At this juncture B. Ruby Rich opened the conversation up to the audience and I mentioned how fascinating I found the character of Verónica because, in gist, I didn’t really like her, though I wanted to like her. I was repulsed by her sense of denial, but was hopeful for her when she started to question herself. But I was most intrigued at the point where she began resisting the cover-up engineered by her husband and cousin. She seemed intent on recovering and making public the clues to her own crime. For me, she seemed to have lost her identity at that point. I asked Martel what she intended by having Verónica resist the cover-up?
“It’s like everywhere,” Martel responded. “Some people do and some people don’t.” She conjectured that probably this is why her films are not popular in Argentina. It’s not that her films are complex; it’s that fewer people choose to identify with them. Every time she makes a movie, she thinks it’s going to be a big success and it’s not. Some Argentines are not used to seeing her kind of cinema so they’re not going to be attracted to her films; but, others who are familiar with this kind of cinema and are in the habit of watching such films, they will be attracted to and identify with her films.
One fellow recognized how difficult the role of Verónica must have been for María Onetto. He saw Verónica as empty, “a social position without much back story.” He was curious how Martel directed Onetto to create a specificity to Verónica’s character even though the script doesn’t grant her much agency? “If you met the actress,” Martel said, “you would discover her potential. She couldn’t express a lot. The actress herself is mysterious. She has a surprising way as far as I’m concerned of conveying [her concerns]. What she was doing was special.”
