Breastmilk – film review

Towards the beginning of Breastmilk, we watch two biologists in a most intimate moment – the first feed with their newborn baby. In their well-meaning attempt to let their son ‘find his way’ by ‘exploring on his own’, they literally expect their screaming son to find the nipple by himself, despite the fact that he can barely move and is a couple of months away from being able to support his own head.

At one point, the baby rolls alarmingly towards the edge of the bed and, caught by his mother’s arm, his mouth comes tantalisingly close to her nipple. Yet even then he is unable to latch on, as the mother doesn’t adjust his position, despite the nurse’s repeated offers of help.

Although it’s undeniably moving when eventually the baby starts to feed, it is so hard to watch a scene like this without being compelled to criticise. And therein lies the problem. The act of breastfeeding is so inherently intertwined with comparison, embarrassment, guilt, frustration, nature and culture that it’s impossible to remain neutral, despite our best intentions. The problem comes when our viewpoints and idealisms are imposed upon others. Throughout the course of the year-long documentary, we watch this same highly intelligent, gently spoken and incredibly patient mother castigate herself for her lack of milk and struggle to come to terms with moving on to formula, as if she has, in her own words, ‘failed’.

Directed by Dana Ben-Ari and executively produced by Abby Epstein and TV personality Ricki Lake, Breastmilk seeks to inform its audience, in an entirely non-judgmental way, of the trials and tribulations faced by modern American women. Watching this as an Englishwoman, the differences between cultures are instantly apparent, not least due to the financial issues faced by our US cousins, who not only live without a publicly funded health service, but who are also only permitted 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave in comparison to our country’s 39 weeks graduated statutory maternity pay plus further unpaid options. Under these implications of not returning to work, the complications of breastfeeding and long hours spent pumping enough milk to feed their babies in their absence are considerable. It’s also easier to understand one woman’s damnation of the English for being ‘ridiculously competitive’ when it comes to choosing to follow a natural path.

Breastmilk is fairly thorough, in that it includes parents from many walks of life, including both male and female gay couples, and women of different races and ages. The overriding theme appears to be the popular concern that women simply cannot produce enough milk. This perception appears to be present right from birth, when nurses thrust $300 pumps upon new mothers before their milk even has a chance to come in. As noted by one of the lesbian parents, this leads so many mothers to believe that there must be something inherently wrong with their bodies. Indeed the overwhelming sense of failure follows through right till the very end of the movie.

Although engorgement is mentioned early on in the chronological documentary, issues like mastitis and pain are not really addressed, which to me would have produced a better-rounded account. The fact remains that this process, which is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world, doesn’t always go according to plan – and that’s not always due to lack of milk.

Much will be made in reviews of this film of the extreme close-ups of nipples expressing streams of breast milk accompanied by the ecstatic strains of an operatic aria, followed swiftly by a discussion about lactation pornography. Although I found this amusing and it helped to give Breastmilk more of an irreverent edge, the style was sadly rather limited to just one section, and about an hour in, the documentary began to drag due to numerous longwinded conversations veering away from breastfeeding and towards parent and gender roles and stereotyping.

Where this movie succeeds is that it unquestionably depicts an accurate representation of the guilt and confusion many women experience in American culture today. Where it fails is within the editing. What would have been a hard-hitting and provocative hour-length documentary feature, instead loses impact and focus when drawn out to its full 91 minutes. Which is a shame, because the intentions are so good.


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