Film: The Milk Of Sorrow
Release date: 4th October 2010
Certificate: E
Running time: 94 mins
Director: Claudia Llosa
Starring: Magaly Solier, Susi Sánchez, Efraín Solís, Bárbara Lazón, Marino Ballon
Genre: Drama
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: DVD
Country: Spain/Peru
The niece of Peruvian author and political activist Mario Vargas Llosa, Claudia Llosa brings a psychological and sociological eye to South American cinema. The Milk Of Sorrow explores the consequences of terrorism on a highly superstitious generation of female victims who survived the brutal rapes of the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso, at the price of their loved ones and their way of life.
Death and sex never stray from the surface of this film. In the opening scene, we hear the cracked, brittle voice of Perpetua singing unflinchingly on her deathbed of the rape she endured while pregnant with Fausta years previously, and the graphic details of the torture she and her husband suffered.
Elaborate marriage ceremonies are part of the fabric of everyday life, and moments later we see Fausta’s cousin, Aída, trying on her wedding dress, and parading around the dusty family compound. Complete with ludicrously long train, the family dogs and children playing football underneath become emblematic of the rough and tumble nature of life and the need for stability.
The domesticity of the scene is upset by Fausta. Her nosebleed, followed by a fainting fit, marks the beginning of the twin concerns of the film: her mother has passed away, and her last connection to the provinces and her old way of life has ceased to exist, whilst her uncle decrees that Perpetua must be buried before the Aída’s wedding, lest mourning recalls memories of the horrors that have blighted Peru and would spoil their optimistic urban life…
Fausta is slow moving and defined by reticence, she bleeds when she is afraid; her family believe she has no soul and that fear was nourished at her mother’s breast. A gulf exists between science and what the family are prepared to believe, they cannot understand the psychological basis for Fausta’s behaviour, but are supportive nonetheless. When Fausta is faced with tactless chat up lines such as, “If red is the colour of passion, let me bathe in your menstruation,” you can understand her desire to uphold her mother’s precaution of using a potato as a barrier to rape. As Fausta’s condition deteriorates, we see her seated amongst blooming expectant mothers in hospital, or unable to accept the smallest of kindnesses from men, apart from being walked home.
The film makes apparent that death and marriage are booming industries. As Fausta searches for a suitable coffin for her mother, she starts at the high-end with paunchy salesmen to gaudy painted versions presented by a woman in white stilettos. Fausta’s family are in the lucrative business of lengthy wedding preparations, and this is where much of the humour lies. Her aunt carelessly decorates a cake, knowing her customer is illiterate and the presentation of wedding gifts rivals the Generation Game in terms of tack and enthusiasm. And yet death is ever present. Photographers goad the couples with comments such as “smile, you’re not dead” and “this is not a cemetery,” while Fausta runs upstairs to find Perpetua’s embalmed body has been hidden under the bed to make way for Aida’s dress. The juxtaposition of the mummy and this symbol of fertility underline Fausta’s own position: she IS unable to take part in life when she is so haunted by death, and a somewhat reasonable fear of men.
Magaly Solier’s unique and almost impossibly elegant bone structure makes you wonder if a there could have ever been a man involved in making her, while her broad hips and the male appreciation she inspires tell a different story. Fausta’s employment at the ‘Big House’, the home of an affluent composer and pianist, is considered “just what she needs,” after the loss of her mother. It allows her to meet different people, but the iconography she encounters in the kitchen of the Madonna and child, with her breast visible, is a suitably ironic statement on what she encounters.
A willowy blonde woman, shown to tower over the local workmen she hires, is presented to Fausta as the image of a strong independent woman. Fausta’s initial timidity is overcome by Noé’s encouragement of her deeply autobiographical folk-singing - something she has inherited from her mother alongside fear. Her song about mermaids, quinine and contracts has an authenticity Noé can only dream of, but can easily exploit. Fausta is subjected to what can only be described as cultural rape; Noé takes what she wants and leaves Fausta to her greatest fear, walking home alone. It’s a painful allegory - the body and spirit of a nation can be appropriated and abused, and not just by those who fit the mask of the brutal aggressor.
Llosa’s poignant and perfectly nuanced story of a developing nation shows the people of Lima as dynamic force in the spiritual rebuilding of a country afflicted by civil war. Human kindness is shown to thrive in the most hostile of circumstances proving that a hopeful future can have roots in bloodstained soil. SR
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