The Woman Who Left Reviews

Summary After 30 years in prison, a woman discovers that her friend and fellow inmate committed the murder of which she was accused. This leads to her release and subsequent discovery of the man who framed her.

• Drama

The film makes uncompromising demands on your attention and your empathy. But it is also illuminating and, in its downbeat, deliberate way, exhilarating.

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.

It’s a film you have to feel your way into, like a ruined church or a haunted house.

At once over-repetitive and less surprisingly digressive than some of his other films, The Woman Who Left may not represent Diaz at his absolute peak, but it’s a powerful, thoughtful melodrama that pulls you into its world and delivers a number of irresistible emotional coups.

The characters here are so vividly drawn and performed, and the contemplative mood so remarkably sustained, that the film casts a genuinely suspenseful and mesmerizing spell over the span of its nearly four hours. Don’t be daunted by its length: at its best, Diaz’s film has the richness of a great, wide-ranging, deeply immersive novel.

The Woman Who Left may not be a movie for everyone, but if you allow yourself to settle into its leisurely tempo and marinate in its heroine’s journey, it can be a richly rewarding experience.

It suffers by resembling arty, didactic bloat when it most begs for a more sophisticated dramatic touch.