A rich and imaginative evocation of a family in turmoil.
80
The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
The film is gorgeously shot and contains a plethora of haunting images.
80
Variety
Variety
At first, the picture seems a slow-moving, particularly well-framed ethnographic study of life in the big city in Peru; it only gradually becomes clear that Llosa's second feature perfectly aligns form and content.
80
MovielineMichelle Orange
MovielineMichelle Orange
A sweeping theme writ small and somewhat gnarly, The Milk of Sorrow is, as Llosa has written, about "unresolved, violent, personal and collective memory" and a "metaphor for breakdown."
80
Village VoiceElla Taylor
Village VoiceElla Taylor
In this wonderfully strange, hypnotically beautiful second feature from writer-director Claudia Llosa, the traumatic experience of the 1980s civil war on Peruvian women is passed down through song and, it is said, through their mothers' milk.