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Critics 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.
Critic 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.
All Critics (37) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (30) | Rotten (7)
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.
Claudia Llosa, the director and co-writer, favors wide shots and long takes, which lend an air of realism to the beautifully shot allegory.
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.
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.
Ably gives voice to a period in history almost completely invisible to the world at large.
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.
A poignant allegorical drama centered on the belief that the trauma experienced by the many women raped during the years of terrorism in Peru has been passed on to the following generations, and it relies on a beautiful performance by Magaly Solier.
Super Reviewer
A Peruvian girl believes that her raped mother's sorrow was transferred to her through breast milk. That intriguing premise is somewhat wasted in a slow and drawn out tale of the girl trying to raise money to bury her mother's corpse in her native village; it's most interesting for its peek at Peruvian folk beliefs and customs, including an unusual use for potatoes.
While participating in the rehearsal for her cousin Maxima's(Maria del Pilar Guerrero) wedding, Fausta(Magaly Solier) falls so ill that it cannot be explained by her usual nosebleeds. At the hospital, she is diagnosed with a potato in her vagina and does not want to be treated. As she tells her uncle Locido(Marino Ballon), she heard a story about a woman who did the same during the terror and was not raped. Fausta probably heard the story from her mother(Lucy Noriega), now deceased, who she has to find the funds to bury in her native village. To do so, Fausta gets a job at the Big House but does not get an advance on her wages. What easily could have been on the level of a very silly episode of "House," instead turns out to be an understated allegory of Peru that is admittedly more than a little predictable. On the one hand, everybody seems to be getting married, leading to a worldwide fabric shortage and most people with little spending money. Or they are people like Fausta who carry the psychic baggage of past generations around with them. She is haunted from songs her mother used to sing, not transmitted through breast milk, which just goes to show you that there is some truth in myths.
The Milk Of Sorrow develops a complex story of abuse and recovery inspired by the events in Peruvian history circa 1980 to 1992 with aesthetic and metaphorical dimensions. Poetic writing, lush photography and a telling cinematography of rich local Peruvian colors.
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