The basic premise of The Headless Woman is nothing new. A middle-class Argentine lady, Verónica (María Onetto, of whose mesmerising performance there is no doubt), is driving home through a parched rural landscape. Distracted when her mobile rings, she takes her eye off the road and runs over… well, through the grimy window of her car, it looks like a dog. (Martel, it seems, has a passion for panes of glass – the more smudged and distorting the better.) Yet once she has driven away and got over a slight concussion, she starts to suspect it was a child. Days pass and a local boy is missing. His corpse turns up in a river, presumed drowned. Driven to admit her guilt, Verónica is unable even to establish it as a fact. Closing ranks, her friends and family conspire to erase a crime that may or may not have occurred.
This passage looks at the basis of the Headless Women and the struggles Vero places mentality from her hit and run. As audience members were reminded of her apparent privilege as a bourgeoise white woman in the film in comparison to villagers who are clearly lower class. The frame of the sunglasses being put on and taken off in the screen after the hit and run and at the sports field symbolizes the cloak of hierarchy she hides behind as her family and friends conspire to erase the crime she may or may not had committed.