CLAUDIA LLOSA, “THE MILK OF SORROW”

By Brandon Harris

For Claudia Llosa, director of the Berlinale-winning and Academy Award-nominated Peruvian film The Milk of Sorrow, magical realism isn’t a literary genre or filmic device, it’s an element of national identity and consciousness. Her film, easily the most critically-lauded film to emerge from Peru, is set in the rough-hewn mountain settlements on the outskirts of Lima. It concerns a young Peruvian woman (the captivating Magaly Solier) who, having contracted a mysterious disease that is passed on via breast milk to the daughters of rape victims taken by soliders serving Peru’s deposed terrorist regime, sets out to bury her newly deceased mother. Her uncle, with whom she lives, is about to marry off his rather bone-headed, carefree daughter and wants no part of paying for a burial. He suggests she simply bury her mother in his backyard. Aware of her mysterious disease, he accepts it matter of factly. In one of the single most unsettling scenes you may see in a cinema this year, he tries to explain to a doctor the folkloric disease which afflicts his daughter. The young woman, who is prone to nose bleeds, muteness and bouts of fainting from the disease, begins to work for a wealthy, blonde classical pianist in Lima who treats her dismissively. However, as she receives a rude introduction to the world of elite Peruvian musicianship, the movie toys with the notion that something may come of her hauntingly beautiful and profanely lyrical singing, the only coping mechanism that the victims of the state-sponsored sexual torture have to rely on.

While she draws upon influences ranging from the high European modernism of Antonioni to the short filmography of Barbara Loden, her film most clearly suggests a clever re-imagining of Todd Haynes’ Safe set amidst an altogether more violent and troubled South American milieu. Never failing to worm its way under your skin, The Milk of Sorrow is a potent and unforgettable film, one which challenges you to engage with it on its own terms and, like the very best cinema, seems to build its visual language from the ground up; you’ve never … Read the rest