The Milk of Sorrow

La teta asustada

Peru, Spain

2009

94 Min

Color

1.85:1

Spanish, Quechua

Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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PROD Antonio Chavarrías, Claudia Llosa, José María Morales

CAST Magaly Solier, Susi Sánchez, Efraín Solís, Marino Ballón, Antolín Prieto

PROD DES Patricia Bueno, Susana Torres

SOUND Edgar Lostanau, Fabiola Ordoyo

Berlinale (Competition): Golden Bear, FIPRESCI Prize, London (Film on the Square), Karlovy Vary (Horizons), AFI FEST (New Lights Competition)

Synopsis

Fausta, we are told, suffers from ‘the milk of sorrow’, a melancholy transmitted through her mother’s breast milk. For Fausta’s mother, like many in her village, was raped during the years of Peru’s bloody civil conflict in the 1980s, and Fausta still lives with the consequences of the violence. Only Fausta has found a way of protecting herself both physically and emotionally to ensure that she doesn’t suffer the same fate as her mother. Her mother’s death, however, brings change and Fausta is forced to make decisions that will impact on how she considers and makes sense of her past. With The Milk of Sorrow, Peruvian director Claudia Llosa expertly crafts a film that functions as a tale both of individual trauma and of the wider collective memories and ordeals of the nation. Magaly Solier gives a mesmeric performance as the troubled Fausta, whose story is told against a mapping of the rituals of the community in which she lives and works. Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, The Milk of Sorrow is a striking reflection on communication and community that confirms Llosa as a distinctive talent in contemporary world filmmaking. —bfi

Director

Claudia Llosa

Claudia Llosa was born in Lima, studied in Newton College and received a degree in communication studies in the University of Lima. She is the niece of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the film director Luis Llosa. At the end of the 1990s she moved to Madrid, Spain. From 1998 to 2001 she studied at the film academy Escuela TAI. At the end of her studies she started working on the script for Madeinusa. She moved to Barcelona working in the advertising industry. Madeinusa won the prize for the best unpublished script at the 2003 Havana Film Festival.

In 2009 Llosa finished her second film The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada) which was shortlisted for the 59th Berlin International Film Festival. It was the first Peruvian film nominated for the Golden Bear award, and won the main award.

On February 2nd, 2010 Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow was nominated for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film Category.

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Lays Laine

5Mar13

really for to contemplate this beautiful masterpiece, you need a grounding inserted in historical and mythical andida culture. chronicles a social fact in Peru, presents a symbolic richness of a people traditional - without this light, the film loses its sense. therefore, one 'gringo', one foreign, hardly could to understand. is required to go beyond, see from the inside out ...

Salvador Amores

29Jan13

Tries too hard to be culturally significative, or something. Llosa wanted to maked the next great latin-american film and ended up falling very short. The film has its moments, but overall it's a bit messy and uninteresting. Not to mention it seemed like yet another white person's take on indigenous people...

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Gonçalo Sá

13Jan13

Simple, honest, subtle and very well shot, if a bit too straightforward and slow.

Fernando

21Dec11

I think this movie is a great set of beautiful images without any sense of cohesion. The script does not lead anywhere, and I'm not saying that it has no apparent message, because many great films do not transmit any messages. The problem is that, after enduring a main character that looks retarded for over an hour, all her adventures and sufferings do not matter at all.