I watched Milk of Sorrow (2009) again tonight as the lab segment of a film class focused on film and the city. My co-writer and I have included it in two of our works now.
In the first, we explored how displacement effects protagonist Fausta--a forced exit from a village home to the seemingly lifeless outskirts of Lima, Peru that is exacerbated by a traumatized and terrorized body.
Our second examination explored how gardens are used in the film--the literal garden of Fausta's European employer, as well as the figurative potato garden growing inside her.
While watching the film tonight, I noticed one more way natural elements are presented in the film--through the backdrop used for photos after a family wedding. In a variety of typical wedding pictures, from the loving couple reenacting the proposal to an extended family posing like a choir, a painted waterfall backdrop enhances the joyous occasion. In the mountain desert that surrounds them, the green and blue matte painting looks like a rain forest oasis.
Only when Fausta enters her employer's walled garden or talks about the one she left behind in her village do we see nonhuman life in Milk of Sorrow. But the backdrop for wedding portraits suggests they yearn for green.
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