“Only death is obligatory,” Noe (Efraín Solis) says in The Milk of Sorrow , “the rest is because we want to.” After earning a rare measure of trust from Fausta (Magaly Solier), a traumatized young Peruvian villager who has just lost her mother, Noe becomes exasperated with the extreme fear that circumscribes her life. A gardener at the Lima estate where Fausta takes a job as a maid, he bridges the film’s metaphorical distance between the godless, pragmatic privilege of the city and the deterministic mythologizing of the rural poor, literally: He is the only outsider she will allow to escort her home in the evenings, she being too terrified to walk alone.
Originally posted here:
REVIEW: Peru’s Burdens Slow Down Oscar-Nominated Milk of Sorrow
