Milk Of Sorrow

The Importance of Songs In Claudia Llosa’s dramatic film, The Milk of Sorrow, released in 2010 in the United States, music plays an important role in unfolding what words fail to communicate. The film follows the journey of a young Peruvian girl, Fausta, who finds the need to earn enough money to bury her mother in the city. Her mother’s death forces Fausta to step out of her comfort zone as she is required to find odd jobs. The most significant one is being a maid in a rich woman’s house who offers her pearls in exchange of hearing Fausta sing in her native language, Quechua. It is important to note that Fausta suffers from the disease of “La Teta Asustada,” which is transmitted through the breast milk of a mother who suffered a traumatic
Therefore, it is difficult to perceive what she feels and thinks in significant situations. Fausta often does not make any comments regarding her opinion or view point. However, her signing assists in revealing what she cannot manage to say out loud. One incident that highlights this is when Fausta is in Ms. Aida’s house and she sees a frame of a military man’s boots and she begins to bleed from her nose. Terrified, Fausta begins to sing in order to calm herself down. Although throughout the film Fausta does not make any specific comment on how she feels regarding her disease, the lyrics of this particular song reveal that she associates everything that represents the military with her mother’s sexual abuse. Additionally, the audience learns that she is deeply affected by what happened to her mother, as if she’d experienced it herself. Fausta is not able to communicate this horror and pain with words, however, does so via her songs. Moreover, her innermost feelings are expressed at the conclusion of the film when she carries her mom close to the sea. She does not say anything until she is near the ocean. Here, she sings as the film ends, “Look at the sea, mom. Look at the sea.” The tone in her song transmits her sense of peace. Those four simple words sang are all that takes to understand that Fausta has accepted her faith and is at peace with herself.
During the war of terrorism that took place in Peru, women were often raped. When these mothers breastfed their daughters, it is believed, their pain and terror is passed on to them. Through the mom’s song, the audience learns that she was a victim of this sabotage and that Fausta suffers from the disease. In addition, the song reveals the hardship of her, like many other women at the time, being sexually abused and that that is the reason Fausta is the way she is; a withdrawn and reserved person who is frightened by the presence of men. The use of a song to explain this abhorrent period of time where military men took advantage of any woman, even the ones pregnant, helps the character communicate the indescribable. Her song gives way to express the awful experience through a first point of view and helps the audience understand what these women had to face. Furthermore, the song’s melancholic melody is able to transmit the woman’s sorrow and despair. Although the character’s signing is used to uncover their emotions, it is also used as a foreshadowing tool throughout the