The Milk of Sorrow

This Peruvian film focuses on Fausta (Magaly Solier), a young Andean woman suffering from “la teta asustada,” or the milk of sorrow, a psychosomatic condition afflicting the children of women who were raped during Peru's civil war in the 1980s--transmitted via breast milk. During her upbringing, Fausta's mother entertained her daughter with Quechua-language songs featuring graphic lyrics related to sexual assault and dismemberment, and she also planted a potato in Fausta's vagina as a rape-prevention method. Years later, the adult Fausta still has the tuber within her, which has created endless medical problems. When Fausta's mother dies, relatives in Lima make halfhearted efforts to help—they keep the body under a bed and offer to conduct a hillside burial, but then change their minds and expand the gravesite into a makeshift pool. Meanwhile, Fausta takes a job as a maid to pay for the transport of the corpse back to her Andean hometown, but her new employer winds up exploiting her. Writer-director Claudia Llosa's approach to filmmaking involves having her cast mumble humorless dialogue in endlessly long takes, along the way sending a none-too-subtle message that the Andean natives of Peru are a bunch of superstitious ninnies. Incredibly, The Milk of Sorrow nabbed an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film—a first for Peru but a mistake for the Oscars. Not recommended. (P. Hall)