The Milk of Sorrow and the Power of the Garden, Part 1

Directed by Claudia Llosa, the Peruvian drama The Milk of Sorrow (2009) illustrates at least three versions of the garden growing out of classism, racism, and a bloody civil war. Centered on young daughter Fausta’s (Magaly Solier) struggle to cope with her mother’s death and the memories of war she leaves behind, The Milk of Sorrow draws on musical and visual poetry of gardens to reveal conflicts between Fausta’s impoverished indigenous Lima, Peru community and the white upper-class inner-city fortress where she works as a servant. 

Ultimately, Fausta reconciles these conflicting views, negotiating a solution that promotes a middle ground like that Adamson proposes. The brightly colored artificial garden Fausta’s family creates may contrast greatly with the walled paradise inside Fausta’s employer Aida’s (Susi Sánchez) gates, but the garden growing inside Fausta (both literally and figuratively) serves as a bridge between their conflicting ideologies.

The first “garden” introduced in the film breaks the mournful singing and tragic death that open the film. Fausta’s mother shares her terrifying story on her deathbed, singing of the rapes she endured during Peru’s dirty war between Maoist guerrillas and government security forces in the 1980s and the cursed outcome for Fausta. Fausta has fed on her mother’s “milk of sorrow” and must feel her trauma even after her mother’s death. As critic Rick Vecchio explains, “tens of thousands of Andean Indians did flee to Lima in the 1980s and 1990s to escape political violence… [and] helped to shape the rich tapestry of Peru’s culture and form the character of its society.” 

When Fausta’s mother passes “like a dead bird,” however, the film reveals the colorful constructed garden outside Fausta’s uncle’s house. Although surrounded by barren mountains, Fausta’s cousin is trying on a wedding dress in their dusty yard, and the brightly dressed family sits around an outdoor table looking like flowers bursting out of the desert hills of their blue painted barrio. When Fausta appears, her nose begins to bleed, and a close-up of the blood seems to bud like a rose.This first garden provides color that combats the colorless traumas of war and gender and racial oppression.