Shot in black and white and lasting nearly four hours “Woman Who Left” was praised by Variety critic Guy Lodge as a “powerful and, by his [Diaz’s] standards, refreshingly contained moral study.”
“This is for my country, for the Filipino people; for our struggle and the struggle of humanity,” said Diaz, as he thanked the jury headed by Sam Mendes.
“The Woman Who Left,” is also a comeback for Charo Santos-Concio, in a remarkable return to the screen after two decades in the production realm and as media executive, host, occasional actress, television and film producer, and host of Maalaala Mo Kaya, the longest-running television drama anthology in Asia.
In the movie, for Horacia (Charo Santos-Concio), the Philippines of the late 1990s is not the same country she knew 30 years before, when she was sentenced to life in a women’s correctional facility for a murder she did not commit. She’s unexpectedly released when fellow inmate and best friend Petra (Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino) suddenly confesses that she, coerced by Horacia’s ex-boyfriend Rodrigo, framed her for the crime all those years ago.
Working once more in rich but unromantic black and white, Lav Diaz’s cinematography is the film’s other most constant reward.
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