Hot Milk review – never properly gels

Rebecca Lenkiewicz adapts Deb­o­rah Levy’s best-selling novel, but the result is lacklustre.

This icy psychodrama of deep familial discord plays out on the powdery-hot sands of the Spanish coast (although the film was shot in Greece) and sees the astonishing codependence of a mother and daughter come to a violent head. Sofia (Emma Mackey) has a permanent scowl on her face, and it’s easy to see why. She has to tend to her ailing mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), who has a strange affliction where she is unable to walk, but has no physical issue and, indeed, can occasionally just hop out of her wheelchair. Hoping that a visit to a new-age clinic will get to the bottom of this issue, Rose receives pseudoscientific treatment while Sofia hooks up with Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), an extrovert handicrafter whose flighty demeanour is hiding some really dismal formative traumas.

The film charts Sofia’s increased torment as she is unable to find calm, simple normalcy in anyone she meets, although she’s not an entirely likable character herself to be frank. Dramatically, the film (which is adapted from a 2016 novel by Deborah Levy) pulls in too many different directions to be truly effective, and director Lenkiewicz doesn’t do enough to really convince that any of these people deserve a modicum of happiness. Still, it’s atmospherically shot by Kelly Reichardt regular, Chris Blauvelt, and boasts an effectively glitchy ambient soundtrack care of Matthew Herbert.