In 2009, director Claudia Llosa made headlines when her film “The Milk of Sorrow” earned an Oscar nomination for the Best Foreign Language film. While it did not win the award (Argentina’s “The Secret in their Eyes” took home the award), the film’s global platform put the Peruvian auteur on the map.

“Aloft” is the follow up to “Milk of Sorrow” and explores themes of loss and the search for one’s identity. Set across two differing narratives that eventually connect, the film explores a mother’s decision to abandon her child for the sake of her spiritual development and the consequences it has for the boy in his young adulthood.

As the film commences, tragedy is everywhere. A group of people are meeting with a healer to try and help their children improve their respective circumstances. Nana (Jennifer Connelly) has two children and is looking for the health and safety of her younger one, who apparently has some form of cancer. But when the healer is working on helping another child, her oldest son Ivan’s bird gets in the way, topples his construction and draws the ire of the public beholding the spectacle.

The bird eventually gets murdered by an angry townsperson, leaving Ivan traumatized and Nana with no seeming cure for her son.

Then the story takes off in two different directions. In the first, Llosa explores Nana’s struggles to keep her son alive (or at least her hope of keeping alive) and slowly learning that she has healing powers. This of course causes a strain with Ivan who is still upset about losing his bird and his bond with his mother.

Meanwhile, the second narrative follows Jannia, a reporter who is seeking out Ivan to find Nana. Jannia’s motives are not completely clear, but over time we learn that she is also looking for a cure from a deadly illness. Ivan is following along with Jannia, not fully knowing that she is seeking his mother.

Both stories showcase characters finding healing for their respective issues with one plot showing separation and the other striving for unification. Structurally it works well, and some events in Ivan’s story early on shed some light on what is to happen in later events of Nana’s story.

At one point, Jannia and Ivan walk through a frozen lake in the night. Suddenly Ivan becomes restless and slowly but surely starts to unravel. He thinks the ice will break and is paralyzed by the fear of it happening. Jannia of course has to make him realize that nothing is going to happen, but his irrational fear leaves the audience with many questions, questions that will eventually find their answers in the other narrative.

In this manner, Llosa allows the two threads to keep the viewer in suspense. Ivan’s journey might not be filled with a great deal of tension, but there is always an anticipation that lingering questions will be answered in the far more dynamic story of Nana’s abandonment.

The film moves a relatively brisk clip, with Llosa able to sustain a balance between the two narratives; neither ever gets in the others’ way.

The gritty handheld cinematography allows the viewer to inhabit the poverty of the two characters’ respective worlds, while the larger tableaus of the frozen tundras adds to the emptiness of the main characters’ lives. The emotional warmth and fulfillment must be found within them, because the world around them is simply not capable of giving it to them.

One of the most compelling moments in the film is the climax of the Nana narrative in which she confronts her son with her decision to leave him. The boy sits on the tire swing quietly as she stands over him. At one point, they are in the frame together, but eventually she leaves him behind, no longer sharing the frame with him. Suddenly he reappears but to attack her, not to reconcile with her as might be anticipated. It is one of the more potent scenes in a movie filled with high levels of emotion.

Connelly is the backbone of the film, offering a meditative performance that grows more and more serene as the film develops. But her confrontation with Cillian Murphy’s grownup Ivan is a tense affair that brings out the best in both actors.

Melanie Laurent plays a cool and collected Jannia, providing a nice counterpoint to Murphy’s more volatile Ivan.

“Aloft” is certainly high on the emotions, but those willing to stick with the film on its own turns will find satisfaction in Llosa’s structural acuity and the visceral performances on display.