The Woman Who Left

Running a bit under four hours, Lav Diaz’s new film--inspired by the same Tolstoy short story as Stephen King’s novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" (collected in 1982’s Different Seasons)--won the Golden Lion award at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. The protagonist is Horacia (Charo Santos), who is released in 1997 from a Filipino women’s prison after the actual perpetrator of the murder she was convicted for decades earlier--a fellow inmate and her best friend--confesses to the crime. Horacia also learns that the man who framed her was Rodrigo, a former lover who was enraged when she married someone else. But Horacia’s return home is joyless, since her husband has died, her son has gone missing, her daughter has moved away, and the country is reeling from endemic violence and poverty. On the one hand, she is determined to avenge Rodrigo’s betrayal, plotting the murder of this wealthy, powerful man. On the other, she becomes on the outside what she was behind bars--a helpful and comforting presence to those who are even less fortunate than she, most notably a young transgender prostitute (John Lloyd Cruz) who is brutalized by local thugs and aims to repay her kindness. The black-and-white images are often stunning and Santos gives an impressive performance, but glacial pacing also turns this into an overly static quasi-epic of misery and rebirth, when it could have been more effective as a straightforward two-hour drama. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)