The Milk of Sorrow (2009) on Netflix
Fausta suffers from the Milk of Sorrow, a disease passed through the breast milk of abused women. She cannot pay for her mother's burial and works for a pianist, Aída.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.7/107,716 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Peru, stories of the violence between Sendero Luminoso and the government have left Fausta with a fear of men and of rape. She has the Milk of Sorrow, a disease passed through the breast milk of abused mothers. To discourage any attack, she keeps a potato in her vagina, and it affects her health, though she refuses to let doctors remove it. When her mother dies, the family cannot pay to return the body to their village for burial. Fausta finds work in the Lima house of Aída, a wealthy pianist preparing a piece for a recital. Aída discovers that Fausta writes her own songs, and offers a string of pearls if she finishes one. Fausta needs that money for the funeral.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Milk of Sorrow became the first Peruvian film ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, at the 82nd Academy Awards.
- The film is based on Kimberly Theidon's book Entre Prójimos, which documents testimonials of women who were raped by as many as thirty men at a time, often resulting in pregnancies.
- Claudia Llosa drew on the folk belief that the trauma of women raped by members of the security forces was passed on to their children through their breast milk.
- Most of The Milk of Sorrow was filmed in Manchay, an impoverished area southeast of Lima that indigenous people had taken over in the 1980s to escape from terrorism.
