The Woman Who Left

The pace is an anti-ornamental affectation that artificially distends an hour's worth of action.

Diaz has made an epic-length small film about the powerless, one full of moral urgency that he chooses to elongate and slow down to a crawl. It's a quiet consideration of grief and mercy, of control taken and freely given up.

That a film this busy can find such focus in its closing moments says that whatever Diaz's methods of inspiration and creation, he knows exactly what he's doing.

Ang Babaeng Humayo is a bleak and blistering portrait of the human condition.