Review: Hot Milk

Director:  Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Stars:  Vicky Krieps, Fiona Shaw, Emma Mackey

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut following several notable screenwriting credits (some glorious, some… less so) is a strange creature, boasting a number of independently impressive qualities, but struggling persistently to bring said qualities together. It is quite evidently the adaptation of a novel (Deborah Levy’s), itemising a specific – and specifically terse – mother/daughter relationship, with lived-in characters whose interiority Lenkiewicz tries to extrapolate onto the screen. In many ways its a very generous piece. An actor’s piece. I’m just not entirely sure if it’s an audience’s piece, too.

Londoner Sofia (Emma Mackey) is in rural Spain with her Irish-born mother Rose (Fiona Shaw) who hasn’t been able to walk in over 20 years. No landmark physical accident lays claim to Rose’s condition, inferring that it may be psychological. Sofia has been her de facto carer, sacrificing huge portions of herself and her life to satisfy the whims of her mum. They’re in Spain so that Rose can test out an unconventional talk-therapy treatment with specialist Dr. Gomez (Vincent Perez), a routine that brings to mind the psychoplasmics of David Cronenberg’s The Brood. But the trip doubles as a belated opportunity for Sofia to discover herself, something that manifests in a sexually heady romance with local bohemian Ingrid (Vicky Krieps).

Ingrid’s bold, erotic entrance into the narrative – arriving on horseback like Lawrence of Arabia, her character infatuated with deserts – is quite leading in and of itself. Thanks to the film’s built-in slipperiness, we’re inclined to second guess the established reality. Is Ingrid a manifestation of Sofia’s? When she interacts with others this is easily discounted, but perhaps she serves some other psychological purpose. Conceivably she stands in for a younger version of Rose, not frozen in fear to her wheelchair? The woman Sofia’s mother could have been. Or for Sofia herself, similarly untethered. In spite of her connections to others, the sense perpetuates that Ingrid is a little otherworldly.

Matthew Herbert’s music lilts on some teasingly unfinished refrains, like the opening to a dreampop song that never fully manifests. It teases a sense of half-recalled memories, which plays into the story’s developing idea of family secrets that have fixed Rose in place. She’s a fearful fusspot of a woman; an oppressive presence that Sofia has weathered throughout her life. The Mediterranean coastline teases the possibility of escape.

DP Christopher Blauvelt certainly holds up his end, ensuring that Hot Milk has a balmy humidity to it. It feels like a holiday. A small moment that lingers is when Sofia takes a photo of Ingrid so she can “remember”. Taken literally, it’s an oxymoron. But it crowbars open the notion of cinema – even narrative cinema – as a doorway to sense-memory connections. However, like so many tendrils that unfurl here, it never fully joins its counterparts or comes to fruition.

The film’s abrupt cut-to-black ending is the final and most jarring example of a nagging problem throughout the film. It’s elusive in a way that isn’t satisfying. Points earned for evading the obvious, sure, but too much is left unsaid or unexplained. Hot Milk can feel a little like flicking through a family photo album dotted with discoloured squares where pictures have been removed. One can identify the negative spaces, but filling them is something else.

For Mackey, Shaw and Krieps, however, this is potent and (seemingly) substantive material. Their relative screen time varies quite dramatically, but each is evidently fully inside their respective character. The antagonisms between mother and daughter feel centred in truth. The summer fling flirtations between Sofia and Ingrid similarly vivid. It’s just a shame that none of this really amounts to anything. It feels tantalisingly close then far off again, caught by the deceptive pull of the tides. A sandcastle washed away.

Still, the memory lingers.