Hot Milk Review: A Psychodrama That Skims the Surface of Deeper Trauma
In Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s new film, a wispy mystery masks the deeper anxieties of a fraught mother-daughter relationship. Unfortunately, without the guiding narration of Deborah Levy’s source novel, this sun-drenched adaptation struggles to articulate the source of its young protagonist’s frustration as she cares for her ailing mother in Spain.
“Hot Milk”: A Mother-Daughter Psychodrama That Skims the Surface of Trauma
At the heart of the psychodrama in Hot Milk is Rose’s baffling condition: a paralysis of the legs that has plagued her for years. Played with bone-deep bitterness by Irish actor Fiona Shaw, Rose is an elderly single mother whose illness remains undiagnosed. Doctors suspect it’s psychosomatic, a physical manifestation of a distant trauma she refuses to confront. Director Rebecca Lenkiewicz, in her adaptation of Levy’s novel, seems less concerned with finding a cure for Rose than with stopping her condition from spreading to her daughter, Sofia.
The film is told from the perspective of Sofia (Emma Mackey), a beautiful and dutiful young woman in her mid-20s. She has put her anthropology studies on hold to accompany her mother to a small seaside cottage in Spain, where a healer named Gomez (Vincent Perez) is attempting a holistic approach. This trip is no vacation. Sofia’s days are dominated by her wheelchair-bound mother, who grates against her like sand in a swimsuit. Rose, whom Shaw portrays as a scowling human gargoyle, whines about the heat, the insects, and her daughter’s perceived lack of ambition, dismissing her as a “permanent student” without realizing this codependent dynamic is her own creation. It’s no wonder Sofia is filled with a palpable resentment.
Hot Milk feels like a stifled scream, a movie that channels both the debilitating force behind Rose’s paralysis and the suffocating influence she holds over Sofia. For first-time director Lenkiewicz—co-writer of acclaimed films like Ida and She Said—this complicated dynamic serves as the film’s center of gravity. For audiences, however, it’s a disruptive magnetic force that pulls Sofia away from her own life, even on a side trip to Greece to see her estranged father (Vangelis Mourikis), who offers disquieting insights.
Emma Mackey, with her sharp, severe profile reminiscent of a young Uma Thurman, has a face that should be able to carry a film. However, the character of Sofia is sketched a bit too thinly to sustain the 93-minute runtime. Lenkiewicz struggles to establish what Sofia truly wants. Is it independence from her chronically unhappy mother? Or does her complicated, often erotic dynamic with the elusive Ingrid (Vicky Krieps)—the source of little pleasure and much jealousy—represent a genuine desire, or simply another person to obsess over and heal? The film never explicitly reveals the cause of Rose’s illness, and while it attempts to draw a parallel by diagnosing a similar “blockage” in Ingrid, these deeper truths remain frustratingly out of reach.
The film unfolds in a dreamy, liminal space in Sofia’s personal evolution, but it lacks the tangible feeling of vicariously experiencing it ourselves. The editing (by Mark Towns of Love Lies Bleeding) makes it nearly impossible to track the passage of time, and the characters feel as though they cease to exist when they’re off-screen. This makes the startling, abrupt final scene all the more shocking.
Looking back from that jarring finale, which has a “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”-like shock value, it’s clear that Hot Milk is a study in breaking cycles and refusing to succumb to trauma. Both Deborah Levy and Rebecca Lenkiewicz seem to advocate a “tough love” approach, which stands in stark contrast to the modern inclination towards embracing victimhood. After indulging Sofia’s indolence for much of its runtime, the movie suddenly champions her newfound sense of independence. Whatever her mother’s fate may be, the film concludes that Sofia must finally learn to stand on her own two feet.
What are your thoughts on films that prioritize mood and ambiguity over a clear plot? Does it enhance the experience or simply leave you feeling frustrated?