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Lucrecia Martel’s Rey Muerto: A Wild Bunch of Violence and Chickens

Argentine director Lucrecia Martel’s latest film, The Headless Woman, has become something of an art-house phenomenon since its release last month. (Its much-extended Film Forum run ended this week but it’s still playing at the Quad.) In celebration of its success, we figured this would be a good time to run Martel’s 2002 short film Rey Muerto, an artfully gritty short that turns one woman’s act of leaving her man into a showdown of memory, jealousy, and resentment worthy of Peckinpah. (We actually think the whole movie is a Wild Bunch reference, but maybe that’s just us.) It’s also in some ways a perfect introduction to Martel’s style, in the way it mixes kitchen-sink realism with a sense of mythic wonder.

Lucrecia Martel’s Rey Muerto: A Wild Bunch of Violence and Chickens