The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) (2009)
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 36
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 7
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.
Average Rating: 7/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
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.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 8,546
Movie Info
Director Claudia Llosa follows her award-winning feature directorial debut, Madeinusa, with this stark meditation on a grim period of South American history in which approximately 70,000 people were murdered between the years 1980 and 2000. Fausta (Magaly Solier) has fallen ill with a disease passed down from mother to daughter through breast milk. But Fausta's affliction isn't biological; it strictly affects Peruvian women who were raped or abused during those two terrible decades of
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Cast
-
Magaly Solier
Fausta -
Susi Sánchez
Aida -
Efraín Solís
Noe -
Marino Ballón
TÃo Lucido, Tío Lucido... -
Delci Heredia
Carmela -
Karla Heredia
Severina -
Bárbara Lazón
Perpetua
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All Critics (37) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (29) | Rotten (7) | DVD (1)
The metaphors are so crystal-clear and the story unfolds at such a deliberate, often infuriatingly slow pace that the impact of the drama is muted.
Top CriticClaudia Llosa, the director and co-writer, favors wide shots and long takes, which lend an air of realism to the beautifully shot allegory.
Trauma is buried and rarely alluded to in this quiet slice of magical realism -- but there's no denying the pain when it comes.
The movie, which won the Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, is littered with unforgettable images of incongruity, destruction, and, finally, healing.
Llosa tenderly documents the slow, surreal process of both personal and community rehabilitation in a film which seeks to lay to rest a nation's civil war grief.
The film is gorgeously shot and contains a plethora of haunting images...
Llosa, daughter of the author Mario Vargas Llosa, employs symbolism so overwrought, her material might well have been better served as a text-even given the film's abundant visual virtues (particularly its spectacular use of landscape).
The surface of Llosa's film may be placid, but the undercurrent of emotion is strong. She demonstrates exquisite control.
In due course, the painstakingly composed cinematography seduces the viewer.
A troubling Peruvian film about how violence lingers in the minds, bodies, and souls of its victims.
Heavily allegorical, frequently impenetrable and ultimately frustrating.
An evocative character study painting a grim, if visually-captivating, portrait of a tormented soul suffering in silence while delivering a powerful message about the consequences of rape radiating across generations like ripples on a pond.
The Milk Of Sorrow is about a country dealing with old wounds and old divisions, and it's about how sometimes it can be easier to cling to pain than to move past it.
An affecting, gracefully crafted Peruvian film that struggles to breathe under the weight of too much allegory and symbolism.
It is to Llosa's great credit that she has infused Fausta's awakening with dignity, and made her of a time, place, and conception not to be confused with any other.
If you accurately described each scene, you'd have a book of poetry. That's how detailed and vivid are The Milk of Sorrow's rhythms.
Monotonous.
(Director Claudia Llosa's) ability to articulate the complexities of the story, with its aesthetic and spiritual dimensions, is extraordinary for such a new talent.
A potato, whether metaphorical or not, would have conveyed far more meaning on a dinner plate of the poor, than inside a female orifice. And if the protagonist is meant to be distanced and alienated from history, must the filmmaker do so too.
Necessarily sombre in style, but with flashes of magic-realism sprinkled throughout, director Claudia Llosa makes admirable attempts to find beauty in her protagonist's upsetting circumstances...
There can be no more beautifully shot or perfectly framed film out in London at the moment than Claudia Liosa's allegorical tale.
Infused with local colour, this Peruvian film finds real resonance in its light handling of a personal journey. Without overstating its themes or sentimentalising the drama, filmmaker Llosa tells a story we'll never forget.
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Movie: ID: 770805346 Title: The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) Release Date: 2010-08-27 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 6 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Eine Perle Ewigkeit (DE)
- Fausta (FR)
