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.