The Milk of Sorrow

Every Rose Has...A Potato in its Vag- Magaly Solier in The Milk of Sorrow
 
Time Investment: 100 min.
Return on Investment: 95 min.
 
Acontender for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Academy Awards, the beautifully shot Peruvian drama The Milk of Sorrow (Olive Films) is subtle allegory for a county and a people recovering from tremendous violence. While it might be heavy on metaphor, the tender tale is a heartbreaking portrait of the long-lasting scars of war on our descendants.
 
Written and directed by Claudia Llosa, Sorrow concerns itself with a poor Peruvian woman named Fausta (Magaly Solier) living in the windy mountains outside of Lima. Her mother, a victim of rape and torture 30 years ago at the dawn of Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla war, has just passed away and Fausta must bury her. Problem is Fausta has The Milk of the Sorrow, a disease of fear that the locals believe was passed down to young Fausta through her mother’s breast milk. This fear has made her phobic towards men, whom she is certain will rape her as they did her mother. So she has placed a potato in her vagina to protect herself.
 
While Sorrow’s plot may reek of clichéd metaphors (Fausta must bury her past; let her “flower” bloom) the graceful display of traditional customs and their positive effects on the disenfranchised is genuinely touching. Traditional weddings figure prominently into Sorrow, and despite the lingering horrors of their past and the poverty of their present, Fausta and her community (which even features several trans members) somehow find a way to let go and move forward. —Benjamin Solomon