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La teta asustada (2009)
Our Flowering of Hope in the Burial of Our Fears
© A.J. Malouin 2011
(Rating: 3 by A.J. Malouin.) (See our side-bar page "How We Rate Movies" at www.What-To-See-Next.com)
(2009/Spain/Peru. Directed by Claudia Llosa.) Here's a film that could sustain its Best-Foreign-Film Academy-Award nomination on the basis of its cinematography alone. Beautiful in composition and execution, "La teta asustada" ["The Milk of Sorrow"] is -- from first shots to last -- a joy to view.
This is a fine thing, because the film is a tad slow-moving until we get totally into it.
It opens with a beautiful, singing set piece of a young woman's mother dying.
It ends with that same woman leaning over to enjoy the fragrance of a flowering potato plant.
In between, the young woman undergoes an visually intoxicating journey from fears of the past to hopes of the future.
It's such a beautiful journey that, 24 hours after viewing it, this writer dreams of viewing it again. <!--more-->
"La teta asustada" is a story of fact and fable.
It's a fact that the young woman's mother was raped during warfare while she was pregnant with the young woman. It's a fact that the mother taught the young woman to create and sing little songs whenever she is frightened. It's also a fact that the young woman is frightened much of the time. She has taken drastic measures to overcome her biggest fear.
What is fable is that the young woman's fears were inherited from her mother by suckling that mother's breast milk.
The film is full of everyday scenes of how the poor live on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. It's also full of scenes that take place inside and on the grounds of "the big house" where the young woman has gone to work as the night maid.
"La teta asustada" is full of native Peruvian ceremonial courtship and wedding customs, beautiful Peruvian song and music, and exquisitely composed shots of the Peruvian landscape.
Overriding it all, however, is the tangible, taste-able sadness and fear of the young woman. Over the course of 94 gorgeous minutes, that sadness and fear is gently, soulfully left behind, at the seashore, in a hospital operating room, and at the hands of a gentle gardener who comes to see the beauty in the wonderful simplicity of a flowering potato plant.
As with all of our most rewarding film experiences, it's difficult to put into words all the emotions and images this film releases in the heart of its viewers.
Once you've seen "La teta asustada," however, simple things like pearls, potatoes, sand, and stairways will never look the same to you again. Don't deny yourself these sad, simple, beautiful pleasures
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)
A movie beyond tedious
(Rating: 21 by The Film Snob.) (See our blog What-To-See-Next for details on our rating system.)
Here's a movie that will have you clawing at your own face in an attempt to earn release from the on-screen tedium.
You'll not be wringing your hands, nor rolling your eyes, nor sighing into your popcorn. No indeed. For a movie of *this* averagousity, only clawing at your own face will do.
When you begin to claw your own face -- as begin you must! -- start in at the lower portion. You'll need your upper portion, with its handy tear ducts, intact for the Truly Tear-jerking third act which may bring you to your knees if you haven't clawed your way clear of the entire theatre by then.
In a season celebrating Joe Six-Pack and Hockey Moms as the new Gold Standard for leadership and foreign diplomacy, permaybe a movie this tedium will be welcomed as A Thing that anyone could create. *Watching* it, however, is a much more dangerous undertaking.
Here's our story...
Sidney Young, the London publisher of a fourth-tier celebrity/entertainment magazine is just about to see his magazine go under. He needs a miracle, and what he gets is a phone call from New York City, in the USA.
The publisher of Sharp's magazine, Clayton Harding (played by Jeff Bridges) says "Come work for me!" With his own employees carrying out the fax machine out of his apartment/office in the background, saying "Yes" is a no-brainer.
Soon Sidney is at work in New York City, doing allllllll the wrong things. His interviews consist of asking Broadway musical directors if they are (1) Jewish, and (2) gay.
He kills the pet dog of Sohpie Maes, the industry's hottest movie star, when she leaves it in the magazine's offices during a business luncheon.
This is a spot of bad luck for everyone, for, among other things, Sidney imagines that he is in love with Maes, before he wakes up to the Dunst character.
Worst of all, he totally alienates Alison Olsen (played by winsome scripting-confusion by Kristen Dunst), a colleague assigned to show him the ropes of the magazine *and* The Big Apple. (We have, of course, been to a movie before, and so we know how this relationship is going to end up. This is therefore why we'll need intact tear ducts for the movie's third act.)
The problem with The Thing is, the script just never jells, excepting for the one tear-duct set piece in which True Love prevails.
Publisher Harding is supposed to be a son-of-a-bitch who also wants to just throw the whole job over. The script never comes down firmly on one or the other sides of this dichotomy, however, and Bridges is left to twist and waffle in the breeze.
Alison Olsen is supposed to despise Sidney Young, but whenever he comes up to her (as he does constantly) she makes a point of engaging him in conversation, instead of attempting to discourage his existence.
The "comedy" of early scenes is built around a piglet destroying an expensive hotel room, and then taking the elevator downstairs to urinate on the expensive high heels of a celebrity at a cocktail reception.
The hot starlet Maes confesses that she is attracted to Young because he is "wounded." The character never shows us *why* he is wounded, however. This is yet another resultant of the movie's mortally wounded script.
At one hours and fifty minutes, This Thing feels longer (and more deadly) than Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. It is uninspiring, unfunny, unredeemable, and not even rentable. Run Away