Hot Milk: The Struggle for Boiling Point
Emma Mackey anchors an ambitious debut that leaves its most potent feelings floating just out of reach in Rebecca Lenkiewicz's hazy, humid Hot Milk.
WORDS by Beth Bennett
PHOTOGRAPHY by Nikos Nikolopoulos. Courtesy of Mubi.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz's debut outing of Hot Milk, adapted from the 2016 novel by Deborah Levy, is the latest in, what appears to be, a genre of its own accord now - films that whisk us to continental Europe for a existential, emotive endeavour of discovery. Last year, Alice Rohrwacher's La Chimera saw Josh O'Connor's rugged archaeologist-turned-tombolaro muse across a small locale in Italy; in 2021, Olivia Colman reminisces, regrets, and revitalises in Greece in Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter. These sorts of stories have existed globally for years, of course, the majesty of a foreign trip or move to view life from a new perspective is a fantastically interesting plot vehicle, one that can incorporate elements of romance, horror, and comedy in a way so unique to the experience of a contemplative traveller. However with the ease of sweeping oceanside establishing shots, the refracting of light in the waves, and that sound design - so distinctive in its ripple of salt water and low hum of high summer heat - the trap of this genre is two fold: replication over innovation in these shots, and finding that balance between beauty and the torment of your protagonist.
Hot Milk, simmering away at the Spanish coast, is aware of this trap, and with that Lenkiewicz's direction wants to invert our expectations. Though the typical shots are present, the sound design familiar, there is a very subtle edge here that makes each location, from an expensive experimental hospital to a patch of desert with a single tree, feel claustrophobic. Wide shots almost feel sickening, the expanse threatening - water filled with jellyfish, the dark black night unpredictable. Mid shots are invasive and close ups gut-wrenching. And this is all precisely in-line with the experience of our protagonist which, in Lenkiewicz's drive for difference, ultimately backfires, and what should be a moment of catharsis, feels half-effective.
Emma Mackey's Sofia is trapped by her mother Rose, a cantankerous Fiona Shaw, whom she cares for and has accompanied on this trip to visit a private consultant about her debilitating condition, leaving her wheelchair-bound and with pains in her joints and bones.
But it isn't the fact, really, that Sofia has to care for her mother that feels like prison for her, it's the fact she has to care for her mother. Rose, a snapshot of a middle-class mother abandoned by her child's father, is demanding. She demands attention from every one she meets, for her daughter to behave a certain way, for her doctor to listen to her a certain way. There are reasons for this that we discover, yes, but having to experience Rose through Sofia, through the daughter who is unable to communicate her own wants and needs to her mother (or anyone else, truly, for that matter), fosters a sense of resentment towards Rose that, by ingraining us into Sofia's perspective through this direction, never relieves. As the film reaches its dramatic end, Rose's reveals don't resonate as deeply because we've experienced wholly how Sofia has felt, leaving a sense of dissatisfaction, of frustration, that we don't quite reach those emotional highs we expect from this sort of film.
What's more, in Sofia's small rebellions as she finds pockets of freedom to explore the town, we see her grow from wrestling with her struggle for self-advocacy to standing up for herself in an all manner of ways. But this journey feels underserved, especially the romantic relationship with the older Ingrid (Vicky Krieps) where a, presumably intended, demonstration of mysticism as Sofia embarks on this sexual awakening and grapples with adult relationship dynamics just ultimately ends up feeling disjointed.
Lenkiewicz is an exciting filmmaker, her risks and innovations demonstrated here have potential, and it shows an artist keen to submerge her audience in the protagonist's mind totally, the critique here is how that balances with the needs of the story. As we become Sofia, we're left to cast ourselves adrift from the other characters, waiting in the water for something, for that jellyfish sting to bring it all together. Unfortunately, we remain untouched.
Hot Milk is currently available in select cinemas in the UK.
A MUBI release.