A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS – Review

Cancer is among the most frightening of medical diagnoses, a true monster with a thousand heads. The last thing someone facing cancer, or any serious illness, or their family needs is the additional stress of dealing with an insurance company that refuses to pay for treatment. There is something inherently unfair, cold-hearted even, about putting families through this additional trauma. Yet it is the reality here, and in other countries that his private medical insurance.

A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS is a taut drama about denial of treatment, a story that unfolds with the tension of a crime thriller. Although the events takes place in Mexico and the film is in Spanish with English subtitles, this story could be in any country with private medical insurance. The film is surprisingly short, at about an hour 15 minutes, but makes it point powerfully and clearly.

Director Rodrigo Pla’s gripping drama opens on a dimly lit room, which is revealed to be a couple’s bedroom at home. Sonia Bonet (Jana Raluy) rushes to help her husband (Daniel Cubillo) when he falls out of bed. Calling to their two teen-aged children to help their sick dad while she calls the hospital, we quickly learn he is terminally ill with cancer and Sonia is struggling to get their medical insurance to pay for the treatment that had helped him. By coming in at this late point in their battle with illness and insurance, “A Monster with a Thousand Heads” gets straight to its point – the insurance company’s bureaucratic labyrinth and Sonia’s frustration with its apparent indifference.

The film looks at first like a family drama but quickly develops the tension of a thriller where anything might happen. Sonia is a well-dressed woman who is unfailingly polite as she talks to the insurance company doctors and representatives but her actions show she is a woman willing to do whatever is needed to get her husband the care he needs.

The film records Sonia’s actions dispassionately, but adds details that build audience sympathy. After waiting at the insurance company offices for hours to see the doctor overseeing her husband’s case, Dr. Villabla (Hugo Albores). Put off repeatedly by a secretary, she glimpses a man leaving. Demanding to know if he is the doctor, the secretary refuses to say, yet Sonia grabs her by the hair and demands she confirm it is him. She is still speaking politely but the burst of violence reveals her level of frustration. As she, with her son Dario (Sebastian Aguirre Boeda) in tow, pursues doctor who is handling her husband’s case, we hear voice-over of court proceedings about an “incident.” The occasional courtroom comments reoccur, as Sonia and her son participate in a series of escalating events.

The son’s presence adds subtly to the drama, as they discuss or her reacts to what his mother does. At first, he has the eye-rolling stubbornness of a teen but as things get out of hand, his reactions reveal emotions his stoic mother reserves.

Cinematographer Odei Zabaleta takes an interesting photographic approach, which helps keep scenes tense. Often the real action takes place in background, out of focus, or scenes are shot through doorways or windows, or are partly obscured. Many times scenes are half-lit, adding both anxiety and menace to the film’s tone. Often, the viewer is left with a sense of being trapped by the structure of the image in the frame, or of something hidden, just out of view. The director uses a fair amount of nudity and near nudity in this film, used to indicate vulnerability in the case of Sonia, search through medical documents in her home wearing only underwear, or being striped bare of pretense, when she confronts insurance company executives in a steam room.

Raluy is terrific as Sonia, keeping the character tightly controlled and avoiding melodrama or any hysteria, despite her increasingly desperate actions. The contrast between her emotional restraint and what is happening on screen gives her character a remarkable presence, and makes the film all the more involving. The only music is incidental, but over the end, credits, it is punk, which we had learn is the son’s favorite – dad had introduced him to punk and ’80s music. It is the kind of subtle detail that the director uses to build the characters and their lives.

The film is very taut, with not a wasted moment, yet we learn about the mother and son through this series of events. She knows where this will end, and in a moment of dry humor, tells him “next time we’ll rob a bank” – that the son takes that without blinking or even a smile, indicates it is typical humor for her. A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS is a powerful, moving film with a strong central performance and a damning point about the cruelty that medical insurers can inflict by bureaucracy.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS opens in St. Louis June 17th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater