14/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Rebecca Lenkiewicz's first directorial effort, based on Deborah Levy's novel, is a multi-layered, women-centric, transgenerational family drama

For her first directorial effort, Hot Milk [+see also:
trailer
interview: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
film profile], acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile], Disobedience [+see also:
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film profile]) has adapted the 2016 novel of the same name by Deborah Levy for a complex, women-centric family drama starring Fiona Shaw, Emma Mackey and Vicky Krieps. The writer-director's approach is rather discreet, except for a few sudden visual and emotional peaks, letting the three actresses and elegant tech contributions bring it to life. The film has just world-premiered in the Berlinale's Competition.

Wheelchair-bound Rose (Shaw) and her daughter and, effectively, caregiver Sofia (Mackey) arrive in summery Almeria, to visit the unorthodox healer Gomez (Vincent Perez), who might be able to help with Rose's mysterious condition. She simply stopped walking, paralysed below her knees, when Sofia was four years old and her Greek husband, Christos, left them.

We quickly gather that the young woman, who deferred her Anthropology studies in order to take care of her mum, feels like a prisoner of her life situation. Mackey plays her with a lot of pent-up energy that will start being released as she meets the free-spirited, hippie-like German lady Ingrid (Krieps). When Sofia first sees her on the beach, Ingrid arrives on a horse, with the sun lighting her from behind like a halo. Is it a slightly ironic angle on the character, or Sofia's idealised image of her? Like many aspects of the story, this is left to the viewers' interpretation. The two start an intimate relationship, where Sofia is soon in danger of falling into her habitual behavioural pattern, despite the fact that Ingrid, unlike her mother, demands nothing from her.

As Sofia's energy starts flowing out, she is often unable to control it and is torn between releasing it and holding it back. Her painful frustration with the lack of information about Rose's past will just keep growing. Despite both her daughter and the doctor's probing, the old woman keeps it to herself, all the way to the unexpected, explosively dramatic ending.

Standing in for Almeria is Greece, which Kelly Reichardt's regular DoP Christopher Blauvelt films classically, with a light touch. It is summer, but we don't feel like it's scorching hot, a strategy which a less-nuanced filmmaker might use to heighten the erotic and emotional tension. Instead, there is usually a breeze, the colours are natural, perhaps even a bit muted, and the few tasteful sexual scenes play out in shadows and detail shots.

Editor Mark Towns (Love Lies Bleeding [+see also:
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And indeed, it happens to be Shaw who shines with an impressive performance, implying secrets whose consequences are manifested physically and which she is unable to hide. Rose's stubbornness comes across as a result of insecurity, with a lovely comic streak that livens up the bleak story. While it is hardly feel-good, to call the film “difficult” would be a disservice to its sophisticated, multi-layered screenplay and its incisive representation of the meaning of archetypal women's roles.

Hot Milk is a co-production between the UK's Bonnie Productions and Never Sleep Pictures, and Greece's Heretic. HanWay Films has the international rights.