Lav Diaz’s Ang Babaeng Humayo is on a roll. After winning the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Festival de Cinema d’Autor, the director’s latest work was recognized with a great review at the New York Times.
The newspaper noted the film’s composition, its beauty, and Charo Santos-Concio’s acting skills.
The film is inspired by the Leo Tolstoy short story God Sees the Truth but Waits, and revolves around the story of Horacia Somorostro, whose “living has become a veritable reclusion perpetua, an imprisonment. Life’s spins and randomness has been very difficult, vicious and inexplicable for her.”
It stars ABS-CBN chief operating officer Charo Santos-Concio, John Lloyd Cruz, Michael de Mesa, Nonie Buencamino, and wife Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino.
Writer A.O. Scotts compares the film’s homage to Italian neorealism and old television, calling it “carefully composed and hauntingly beautiful to behold.” Of course, a conversation revolving Diaz’s works always touches on its length, but “it feels less like a test of your endurance than an appeal to your appetite for character, incident and emotion.”
Of Santos-Concio’s acting, the critic writes, “it brings to the screen a character who is at once elusive and unforgettable.”
Lav Diaz is a critically-acclaimed director whose films have been recognized in the Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. In 2015, his film Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan was screened at the Un Certain Regard section of 2013 Cannes Film Festival and was selected as the Philippines’ entry to the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 87th Academy Awards.
Do you agree? Share your thoughts below!
Follow When in Manila Koji for more stories like this!
