The Milk of Sorrow

The Milk of Sorrow
Spanish	La teta asustada
Directed by	Claudia Llosa
Written by	Claudia Llosa
Produced by	Antonio Chavarrías Claudia Llosa José María Morales
Starring	Magaly Solier Susi Sánchez Efrain Solís
Cinematography	Natasha Braier
Edited by	Frank Gutiérrez
Music by	Selma Mutal
Release dates	February 12, 2009 (2009-02-12) (Berlinale) February 13, 2009 (2009-02-13) (Spain) March 12, 2009 (2009-03-12) (Peru)
Running time	95 minutes
Countries	Peru Spain
Languages	Quechua

The Milk of Sorrow (Spanish: La Teta Asustada, The frightened teat) is a 2009 Peruvian-Spanish drama film directed, written and co-produced by Claudia Llosa. The film stars Magaly Solier and addresses the fears of abused women during Peru's recent history.

It won the

The night of the recital, Aída performs Fausta's song to a roaring applause. On the way back to Aída's home after the recital, Fausta comments about the positive reception that the song received. Aída is afraid Fausta will say something that will let the driver know Aída is not the composer and responds by kicking Fausta out into the dark streets of Lima by herself.

The night after her cousin's wedding, Fausta's uncle comes into her room and frightens her while she sleeps. He begs her to live her life and not waste her days in a state of never-ending fear like her mother did.

At the end of the film, Fausta decides to go through with the operation to get the potato removed and buries her mother near the ocean. It is implied that Fausta will move on with her life, leaving her fears behind her.

Background

Between 1980 and 1992 Peru experienced a period of extreme violence, particularly in the Andean region, because of the uprising of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the actions of the paramilitary and state armed forces. By 1990 the conflict had reached Lima, the capital city of Peru. Claudia Llosa refers in her film to the folk belief that the trauma experienced by women who were raped by members of security force was passed on to their children through their breast milk. Thus, this period of violence continues to affect not only those who experienced it but also the next generation.

Llosa's work is a psychological as well as sociological approach to the 12 years of conflict, and exposes the mass rapes used by the army as a strategy of war. The film is based on the book Entre Prójimos, by Kimberly Theidon.^[1][2] In her book, Theidon documents a number of testimonials by women who were raped by as many as thirty men at a time, atrocities that often resulted in pregnancies. Theidon states that "when survivors of sexual violence speak about their experiences, they place a responsibility on their listeners to respond to what they have heard."^[3] Llosa's film, too, is an attempt to respond to such testimonies.

Filming

Most of the filming locations are in Manchay, an impoverished suburban area in Pachacamac, southeast of Lima, which indigenous people took over during the 1980s to escape from terrorism, and near a high-class area of Lima called Cieneguilla.

Critical reception

The film received positive reviews, having a 78% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 41 reviews, and an average rating of 6.79/10, and a critical consensus:"Claudia Llosa's deliberate pace and abstract storytelling may frustrate some viewers, but there's no denying the visual pleasures soaking in The Milk of Sorrow".^[4] Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 10 critics.^[5]

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