THE MILK OF SORROW – staff review

Nominated for Best Foreign Launguage Film at the 2010 Oscars, THE MILK OF SORROW is the second feature from Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, and is the latest title to feature in the Picturehouse Vive Le Cinéma! series.

Fausta’s relatives believe she suffers from The Milk of Sorrow – a traditional belief that her mother’s anguish and fear after being raped during Peru’s upheavals in the 1980’s, has been passed onto her daughter through her milk. The sudden death of her mother forces Fausta to confront these fears and question the peculiar measures she took to protect her daughter from a similar fate.

Contrasting the exuberant and Westernised behavior of Fausta’s family with Fausta’s own buttoned up rigidity, illustrates how her ‘inherited fear’ has kept her living in the past, stifling her own growth and existence, and holding her back from moving on from the country’s troubles like the rest of her family. Although Fausta is in some ways stuck in the past and living in a constant sate of fear, she manages to maintain more dignity and grace than those around her. While her methods of protecting herself are a little on the strange side, Fausta is an interesting and strong character whose fight to have her mother’s body buried in her home village, is both touching and heartbreaking, in its inevitable failure.

Like the strange eerie quiet after a loud explosion, Milk of Sorrow’s gentle quietness is reflective of the utter internal devastation caused by horrific violence against women, but with out hysteria or crude over dramatisation. Fausta is played with a tender subtlety by Magaly Solier, and director Llosa makes full use of Solier’s beautifully expressive eyes, allowing the camera to be almost mesmerized by her as she goes about her work. The film moves at a pace where the audience can really savor the images and develop an intimate relationship with her as she learns to overcome her mother’s demons, as well as the demons of her inherited culture.

Staff Review: Sara Lovejoy

THE MILK OF SORROW is screening at selected Picturehouse cinemas