MUBI

Atop the dry villages of highland Peru lies a scarred heritage exposed to uncompromising eyes. Amid the Maoist regime uprising some twenty years ago, Fausta’s mother suffered at the hands of guerrilla warfare when state armed forces systematically raped women. As a result, Fausta herself, though never harmed, learns the fear of submission through a peculiar medium: her mother’s breast milk. This old wives’ tale leads Fausta to alienate herself from family members, co-workers, &, moreover, men. When her mother, her only security blanket against a harsh, cutthroat Peru, passes away, Fausta must learn to fend for herself with a new job to cover funeral expenses & a relative’s lavish wedding (in essence, a single’s mixer) to boot.

The cinematography is beautiful in this slow-paced film. The scenes that stick out most in my mind are the frightening encounter with an otherwise trustworthy family member & her brutally jealous, abnormally fickle boss’s desertion onto the streets of Lima, Peru’s capital & largest city. Director Claudia Llosa’s use of two strikingly different locations — a spectrum from the comfort of Fausta’s tiny pueblo & the anonymity of metropolitan Lima — leaves the audience wondering if “the milk of sorrow” really is just a folk legend or a legit concern for security. Maybe no one is safe anywhere.

The ending, however, was a bit ambiguous for my taste. I am a sucker for plot, and I just want to know what happened to her mother’s body. The lasting image left me incredibly sad though.

Out of all of the films at the AFI Festival this year, this was my secret favorite. It’s because this film is so bizarre and so out there. The actors are wonderful and the story unfolds in three different parts: is it really about the milk, the potato or the pearls/music?

If someone were to criticize it for being too “in your face”, I’d understand. However, I really liked this film and recommend it for anyone who wants something truly different.

The film is beautifully shot and I liked a lot of the sequences. Apart from that, I have to say that I had the same problems that I had with Llosa’s first film. You kind of feel that this is made by someone who is in a superior position to her characters. It is a bit like in the old theatre pieces where the lower classes are good for the comedy part only. The only person you really get to know is the protagonist and her story is really well told. All the other characters are more like stereotypes and kind of exploited for some laughs and some nice scenes.

Still it is a movie that I liked most of the time and it has some great photography.