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During the Civil War in the 1980's, Fausta's (Magaly Solier) mother was
raped while pregnant with her. According to Peruvian folklore, that makes
Fausta suffer from something called the fearful tit, which means
she's terribly afraid of sexuality and of men as such - so much so that
she inserts a potato in her vagina and lets it grow there to keep herself
from being raped herself. Then though her mother dies, and when Fausta,
who has been living with mum in the slums of Lima lately, wants to arrange
for a transport back to her hometown in the Andes, she has to realize she lacks
the money to do so - and thus accepts a job as maid at composer Aida's
(Susi Sánchez) place, with her boss knowing nothing about her dead mother
and everything. Aida though soon grows curious about the songs Fausta and her
mother have made up and uses them as inspiration for her own
compositions, promising Fausta pearls (she needs in order to pay for her
mother's funeral) in return ... but never paying up, so much so that in
the end, Fausta steals the pearls, but faints or is raped (it's not made
clear) during her getaway, and it's only thanks to Aida's gardener (Efrain
Solis) whom Fausta has slowly started to trust that she does get away in
the end. And ultimately, she takes mum back home - but on the road there
decides to not go all the way but instead bury mum at the beach because
she would have liked it. A film that has been made first and
foremost to please the arthouse and world cinema crowd: It has everything
from an
indigenous girl from the slums to the obligatory rape is bad-message, from a
realist depiction of poverty to an anti-capitalist subplot, from a
(diffuse) political subtext to local folklore (including music), from
(heavy-handed) symbolism to a burning piano. Now all of these elements
are perfectly ok and could have made a great film, but unfortunately, La
Teta Asustada is not one, because while all its elements are in the
right places, the film pretty much sucks once it comes to storytelling or
character motivations. In terms of storytelling, the film somehow does not
succeed to see the main narrative it has set up at the beginning through
to the end, instead throws in new subplots every now and again, and in the
end just abandons about half of them without any kind of resolution.
Likewise, the characters are just there, they just exist, there is nothing
in terms of character development, on the contrary, they remain
disappointingly two-dimensional throughout, and the only reason we
actually care for Fausta is because Magaly Solier gives a compelling
performance, not because her character is well-written. Having said all
that, the film is not all bad, as mentioned above, Magaly Solier's
performance is flawless and actually better than her character would have
allowed, the film's direction is subtle, and its camerawork is great in
its simplicity - one just wishes there would have been a better script
that supports the positive aspects of the film rather than pleasing the arthouse
crowd ... and yet it seems the filmmaker's tactics have paid off since La
Teta Asustada, certainly no masterpiece, has taken home the Golden
Bear at the Berlinale 2009, besides quite a few other awards.
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