When Ingrid (Vicky Krieps) approaches Sofia (Emma Mackey) on horseback like a pixie mirage, Sofia is instantly captivated, or when Ingrid says, "Do you have any cigarettes? Well, let's go," even though they've just met, one wants to believe they're traveling in a hidden code of desire, psychically connected strangers tanning on the Iberian peninsula. Ingrid, a gauzily veiled German expat dressed as a jaunty lesbian pirate or a swashbuckling waitress, is so empty of a woman in "Hot Milk," Rebecca Lenkiewicz's directorial debut, that this study of lesbian malaise on the shores of the Mediterranean becomes strangely subdued.
Adapting Deborah Levy's 2016 novel, whose title subtly evokes images of breastfeeding, among other bodily activities related to reproduction, the screenwriter of "She Said" and "Disobedience" casts Mackey and Krieps as lovers amid the ruins of Fiona Shaw's anguish. The great Irish actress plays Rose, Sofia's mother, who has taken her daughter to the coastal city of Almería, Spain, to find a cure for Rose's mysterious bone disease, which has left her unable to walk since Sofia (now twenty-five) was four. Or is she? Is Rose faking it?
Director: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Writers: Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Deborah Levy
Stars: Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, Patsy Ferran
A void of irascible need and sulkiness, Rose contemplates death when she's not cursing anyone (or anyone) who will listen, wondering what she would look like if she tumbled off the rocks to her doom. Sofía, estranged from her father for the past decade, simply goes with the flow, having helped mortgage her mother's London home to pay the enigmatic healer Gómez (Vincent Perez) for an elusive treatment that doesn't guarantee a solution to Rose's possibly self-imposed condition.
But the central thrust of "Hot Milk," shot with insolent indifference by cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, revolves around the sudden relationship between Sofía and Ingrid, which develops despite Sofía's grueling caregiving duties. Mackey, raven-haired and listless, wearing a bikini top and cigarette in hand, is attractive enough for the camera to make for a compelling heroine.
But the wonderful Krieps, who has never given a bad performance and can always elevate any material, has even less to work with, as her mental wounds are attributed to a vague past trauma that seems like a character-shaping device. This may work in literature but lacks the drama necessary to translate it to the screen. She's a character who speaks her subtext rather than living it, but there isn't much of the former. Her careless schemes keep the men on the island in the same boat, often to Sofia's smoldering and petulant jealousy.
That these women say "I love you" to each other after only a few days of knowing each other is, in theory, the most realistic aspect of this lesbian love story, but it turns it into a dry narrative that needs more intensity.
That’s not to say that “Hot Milk” doesn’t have its evocative moments, presenting itself as one of those vacation nightmares tinged with ennui, where everyone oozes spiritual depravity and a yearning for something perverse to shake them out of their slumber. Jellyfish scrape the seafloor like thin mushroom clouds, foreshadowing the future, stinging Sofia, who, masochistically (and in a way that carries over to her real-life human relationships), keeps going back for a dip. Here is a world where corpses sizzle on the grill, insects buzz around sweat-glistening flesh, and pills are scattered on the table as Rose begins to ingest a cocktail of mysterious pills prescribed by Gomez. This takes a psychoanalytic approach to analyzing the root of Rose's illness, questioning her about her childhood and Sofia's absent father, who, years earlier, went in search of God and instead found Greece.
When Sofia finally drives to Greece (without a license, but she'll be damned if they tell her she can't drive) to abruptly reconnect with said father, it feels as if a chapter has been cut from the book (or worse, the script), which only underscores how "Hot Milk" threatens to feel like half a movie, or only half of one. The fact that Sofia is a washed-up anthropology student means that, while she may be an astute observer of the human condition, she's barely able to interpret the situation (or the beachside shack, or the hastily built love nest) in terms of what those around her expect or desire from her. She doesn't speak any of the local languages and, self-destructively, places too much hope in Ingrid, as the polyamorous Ingrid isn't interested in commitment.
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