La teta asustada

Our heroine is called Fausta, a girl who is full of fear. "The Milk of Sorrow" or, more exactly "The Frightened Tit" is, in the Peruvian-indigenous tradition, an illness, is being condemned to be a coward. Peru's late History was influenced by guerrilla's warfare and state brutality. Women (like Fausta's mother) were raped, and raped women got sick... of fear. through her mother's milk Fausta is afraid of life, but she is by no mean a coward, because after her mother dies, her struggle is by herself. This movie is beautiful, it combines a very, very strong performance from Magaly Solier, and a universal human struggle in a very typical Latin American city.

Winner of the first award at the Berlinale, La teta asustada is the second film made by Claudia Llosa, director of the brilliant and exotic Madeinusa. The movie shows an interesting picture of a village in Peru, the life of a family, the things they do to earn a living, and the fears of Fausta, a girl whose mother taught her the power of songs to send away tears.Fausta keeps a secret, and she wants no one to discover it. Meanwhile, he tries to save money to make a wish come true.Magaly Solier plays a gorgeous role, like she did in Madeinusa, and makes us share her feelings through her eyes and her voice. Besides, the film shows the customs of a family and the way every member helps doing his best with a smile. Don't miss it.

Young director Claudia Llosa (Madeinusa) has won the Golden Bear and a dozen of other prizes around the world for her second work, The frightened tit, its original Spanish tittle.

Though the plot itself may seem awkward, the movie is a group of 95 minutes rich and beautiful images. The pearls, the potato, the dog, the wedding, the impoverished suburban Lima, everything is accurately directed and carefully thought by Ms. Llosa.

Fausta (outstanding Magaly Solier) is suffering from The frightened tit, an illness that she caught through her mother's breast-milk since her pregnancy happened during the 1980s and 90s terrorism and State violence in the Andes. Now in Lima, Fausta is afraid, she's put a potato in her vagina in order to protect her from being raped, and after her mother dies she finally has to deal with the real life and face her fears,starting to work in a high- class house as a made.

The plot of the movie is fictitious, but it lies on a cruel and past reality of Peru's modern history, combining it with a delicate halo of surrealism, magic realism and sometimes ironic humor. The image of the potato -all time Peruvian ingredient for cuisine- involves the subject of a war and a fear that affected an entire country, though our differences may not accept it yet. The scenes in Fausta's home are the opposite where she works: though the high-class house is in the same impoverished area (another reference to Peruvian social differences), over there is no gray, no dust: there are plants, color, life.

At the end, Fausta realizes that in the root of her fears is the solution of them. The movie, indeed, is presented as a cure for the unhealed wounds of a terrible and recent war that happened on Peruvian soil.

La teta asustada is not, quite understandably, everyone's cup of tea. It is a slow, pensive, drawn-out film that almost feels like an ominous daydream. There is much that goes unsaid, and if you are not familiar with the Sendero Luminoso insurgency in Peru and the enormous amount of political violence perpetrated by both rebel and government forces, the underlying forces driving the film will not make that much sense. This is particularly the case with the rather disturbing opening scene and the graphic account of the rape of the protagonist's (Fausta) mother. There are also dynamics of class, gender, language, and race at work in this film, and the interplay between them is best understood with some prior knowledge of Peru, or Latin America more generally. The opening scene and the revelation that Fausta has placed a potato in her vagina to protect her from rape would be enough to turn many people off from the beginning of the film, and for good reason. Yet this film, to its credit, in my view, refuses to be anything other than what it is – an exploration of the legacy of trauma and fear of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency and the violence that came along with it. I enjoyed this film, but I appreciate films that are slow, melancholy, and leave plenty of time for pondering. It is not necessarily a feel-good movie, but felt more like a gloomy, ambiguous French film. It had more sad moments than happy ones, although that is only fitting of a film with such a dark topic at its heart. Yet there was something bizarrely hopeful about the film, and regardless of how bad Fausta's situation may have seemed, she showed admirable courage, and a faint light does appear at the end of the tunnel.

A realistic portrayal of the impoverished suburbia of Lima, Peru is the frame-set for this fantastic story. Fausta, daughter of a woman raped by terrorists some 25 years ago, assists her mother's death and decides to take her remains back to her hometown, in the high Andes. But, apart from having to work hard to collect the money she needs for it, Fausta has a reason, deep inside, that prevents her from enjoying life or accepting her outstanding physical beauty as a normal girl.

Mastery at low-budget cinematic skill should be credited to Bollywood (the Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry) films, which may not be the most groundbreaking in technical or screen writing terms, but contain music in the form of song-and-dance numbers woven into the script in order to appeal to all segments of the audience and maximise box office receipts. Since Hollywood's multi-million budgets would never have helped shoot realistic and colourful, but rough Brazilian imagery, 'Central Station' (1998) and 'Cidade de Deus' (2002) garnered indisputable acclaim at renowned film festivals after being funded on their own. The example set by off-Hollywood movie makers' efforts have become heroic in countries where movie industry budgets are, to say the least, scarce.

This is the case for LTA. It could have been more on par to Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire' if it wasn't for the Peruvian-Spanish meagre budget available to Peruvian young director Claudia Llosa. If you expect to see acting beaus or beautés, famous screenwriters and crew, expensive car explosions or CGI, go elsewhere. LTA is neat magic-realism, a territory where people may be poor but not disgusting, where their houses are mere recreation centres for fantasy and everyday life to play happily together. Only time will tell if the trend keeps up, spreads globally, and ends up being called Globbywood.

This is a well-told tale of hope where only two professional actors are involved. And this was as clear to Berlinale judges as it is for the general public -those with a thirst for veritable, honest, witty craftsmanship at film-making.