A Monster with a Thousand Heads

A Monster with a Thousand Heads

Although it is easy to call Rodrigo Pla’s “A Monster With a Thousand Heads” a thriller and it certainly does have the qualities of one this is not the sort of film that should be described with a plot roundup or genre tag. What this movie deserves to be known as, first and foremost, is a great piece of smart, engrossing filmmaking. It’s another sign of just how strong Mexican cinema has been lately.

You’ll notice the title card in “A Monster With a Thousand Heads.” But you may not see the first shot that follows; something appears on the right side of the screen, but it’s so dark that I briefly wondered if there was something wrong with the print or projection. There isn’t; it’s just that dark. The blackness lures us into looking at what we can’t see clearly until later: We’re in the bedroom of Sonia’s husband, Guillermo (the late Emilio Echevarría). And that’s one example of the unexpected ways this movie keeps its hold on us visually throughout.

Once we’re in that bedroom, the story’s premise is established quickly and subtly. Mexico City housewife Sonia (Jana Raluy) is doing everything she can to take care of her increasingly bedridden husband, who has cancer that keeps getting worse. He tries to stay stoic about being in pain all day every day, but he also knows he needs better medication than what he has at home and Sonia finds out she could get it for him if she can make his insurance company authorize a different treatment than what they’ve approved.

So she goes straight away from Dr. Villalba (Hugo Albores), whom she learns has to give his OK for this kind of procedure to go forward; but when she gets there, after waiting for hours only to be told he went home already even though he hasn’t, she finds herself in a car with him underground, where he is not alone. In most movies and, really, in other scenes of this film we would stay with Villalba here. Instead Pla places his camera behind the headrest of the younger doctor’s seat as he insults his boss, turns on his lights and blasts music from his stereo; through the windshield we see Villalba, walking away.

Sonia tracks down Villalba after leaving her disbelieving teenage son Dario (Sebastian Aguirre), who is also with her for every step of this process except one. They track down insurance company executives. This takes them into exactly the sort of weekend territory that any reasonable person knows will involve a lot of running around after people who don’t want to be found or bothered.

What they discover, essentially, is that some individuals responsible for granting coverage are under orders from their superiors to deny it to a certain number of clients per month whether they need it or not; and Sonia’s husband falls into that latter category.

Does this happen in Mexico? Does it happen anywhere? The screenplay here is by Laura Santullo (based on her novel), and neither the movie nor its press notes go out of their way to talk about true stories or real-life inspiration. But there’s enough truth enough fact based Kafkaesque setup of an ordinary person against an indifferent monolith at play here to make us feel as if we could stumble across something like this ourselves someday.

A couple of ways into the story, we start getting commentary on it that seems to be testimony in a trial (Sonia’s?) that happens after what we’re seeing. This adds another layer of complexity and with it, some breadcrumbs of information to Plá’s ingenious narrative and visual strategies. Also: At one point Sonia pulls out a gun, which is both very tense and takes us further into genre territory.

Still, for all its increasing grip, this doesn’t feel like a conventional thriller; it has the rapturous textures of an art film throughout, not least thanks to cinematographer Odei Zabaleta’s burnished images. Bárbara Enríquez and Alejandro Garcia’s production design also does much of the film’s visual heavy lifting, giving us not just character but quiet social commentary as well; as Sonia and Villalba go chasing after the insurance executives, they ascend the social ladder so to speak visiting swank clubs and the posh homes of the very rich.

You learn a lot about various strata of wealth in Mexico from this journey even as the story indicts a kind of corruption that leaves many helpless citizens at the mercy of the predatory rich. And that is surely a tale that could be told just about anywhere in today’s world, which is why this beautifully crafted movie will resonate in any country where it lands.

Watch A Monster with a Thousand Heads For Free On Gomovies.