Hot Milk
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut reveals itself to be a self-indulgent and cockamamie piece of indie cinema.
Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackie
Photo courtesy of Mubi.
The title is just as baffling as the content. The opening quotation from the artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois is not much help, either: “I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful.” There is an air of the abstruse about Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut, in which the narrative drifts aimlessly from one scene to the next with little apparent cohesion. The title belongs to the original novel by Deborah Levy, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, but that’s no excuse. Lenkiewicz has carved herself something of a reputation as a playwright and scenarist and one can see the temptation for such actresses as Fiona Shaw, Emma Mackey, Patsy Ferran and Vicky Krieps wanting to work with her. However, Ferran, so good as Mary I in Firebrand and as Jane Austen in the BBC’s Miss Austen, has barely a spit and a cough here as a Spanish nurse.
Fiona Shaw is the true dramatic presence of the story, as Rose, a former librarian from a small corner of Ireland who has been confined to a wheelchair for years, but who can get up and walk once every twelve months. “I am a rare case,” she says with authority. Rose has dragged her twentysomething daughter Sofia (Mackey) along to a grimy coastal Spanish retreat (Almería) where she is seeking treatment from a clinic run by a man called Gómez (Vincent Perez). The latter attempts a holistic approach to her recovery and asks some pretty barmy questions of his patient, while getting her to write out a list of her enemies. Meanwhile, Sofia floats around the vicinity smoking voraciously and getting stung by jellyfish. Mackey, who was terrific in Emily and has some major films in the works, was obviously drawn to Hot Milk to exercise her thespian muscles in something more arty before she was consumed by Hollywood. She is OK here, but is given little to sink her teeth into. Which leaves Vicky Krieps as an enigmatic and Bohemian seamstress, who wafts around with a flirtatious demeanour.
Equal parts perplexing and batty, Hot Milk drags us along purely in the hope that something meaningful might emerge. But Lenkiewicz is not interested in dealing with certainties and bathes several significant scenes in shadow, to further tease out the drama. Previously, she wrote the screenplays for Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida, Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience, Wash Westmoreland's Colette and Maria Schrader’s startlingly good She Said, but does not reveal herself as a great director. Scenes collide into each other with jarring abruptness and the characters remain intriguing but impenetrable. And when Sofia finally prises herself out of her emotional constipation, the film’s sudden climax proves unforgivably unsatisfactory.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, Patsy Ferran, Yann Gael, Vangelis Mourikis, Vincent Perez, Vicky Krieps.
Dir Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Pro Christine Langan, Kate Glover and Giorgos Karnavas, Ex Pro Farhana Bhula, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Richard Mansell, Lee Hazeldene, John Hazeldene, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Deborah Levy, Ellie Wood, Konstantinos Kontovrakis, Peter Watson and Marie-Gabrielle Stewart, Screenplay Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Ph Christopher Blauvelt and Si Bell, Pro Des Andrey Ponkratov, Ed Mark Towns, Music Matthew Herbert, Costumes Sophie O’Neill, Sound Rana Eid.
Film4/Bonnie Productions/Never/Sleep Pictures/Heretic-Mubi.
92 mins. UK/Greece. 2024. UK Rel: 12 June 2025. US Rel: 27 June 2025. Cert. 15.
