The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
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The Milk of Sorrow Movie Review
The Milk of Sorrow is a 2009 Peruvian drama film directed by Claudia Llosa and starring Magaly Solier. It’s an overly slow, but effective movie.
Fausta suffers from a rare disease due to which she is in constant fear and confusion. Faced by the sudden death of her mother, she chooses to take drastic measures to not follow in her mother’s footsteps. Though this story, the film thus addresses the fears of many women in Peru during this dark period of their history, filled with many crimes and rapes.
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What I found the most intriguing, and also undeniably weird, in the film is the overall premise, and the doctor’s appointments which reveal that she inserted a potato into her vagina in order to protect herself from rape. That causes bleeding, which leads to the protagonist’s progression where she finally finds the courage to get that procedure, and to stop fearing men.
Yes, no matter how odd this was, and the titular belief is also very strange, those led to a distinctly Peruvian authenticity to the picture, and couple that with its historical importance and a painful chapter in their history, and you’ve got an essential Peruvian movie for everyone to see as it was also nominated for an Academy Award.
I found the performance from Magaly Solier excellent, and the whole journey of the central character is beautifully portrayed, and quite inspirational. The film is dark, but ending on a light note which I appreciated. It’s also very well directed by Claudia Llosa who infused some very nice magical realist, artistic touches into this whole affair.
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However, The Milk of Sorrow is in the end just a pretty solid movie that rarely reached greatness. Why is that? Well, because of pacing first and foremost. It is so excruciatingly slow at times that the film really became tedious to watch. It lost its momentum, and the scenes which could have been amazing ended up being just fine. The lack of dialogue bothered me, and the overall emotional investment should have been much greater.
The Milk of Sorrow is incredibly slow that it quickly loses its momentum, and it also could have had stronger emotional investment. But the premise is interesting, the film is authentic in its dark plot and some weird developments while benefiting from good direction, a very good central performance as well as an inspirational journey of its protagonist.
