by Natalia Cherepanova

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, her feature directorial debut, adapts Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel into a restrained drama about pain, dependence, and the blurred lines between care and control.

Set against the scorching backdrop of coastal southern Europe, the film follows Sofia (Emma Mackey), a young woman caught in a life she didn’t choose. Her mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), is confined to a wheelchair by a mysterious condition that no doctor has been able to diagnose. Together, they arrive at a holistic clinic in Almería, hoping for a last-resort treatment under the guidance of the cryptic Dr. Gómez (Vincent Pérez).

Sofia, emotionally distant and stalled in her own life, soon finds herself drawn to Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a free-spirited artist whose presence offers the illusion of escape. Their romance, while passionate, is elusive. The same can be said about the film.

The central tension revolves around the unspoken wounds between mother and daughter. Shaw’s performance as Rose is the emotional anchor. She shifts between biting sarcasm, vulnerability, and a despair that never fully surfaces. Mackey captures Sofia’s quiet resentment and longing with restraint, but her character often feels underwritten.

Krieps, typically magnetic, feels miscast in this role. Her portrayal of Ingrid leans into vague mysticism, and the character lacks the grounding needed to explain her emotional pull on Sofia.

Hot Milk leans heavily into ambiguity. That includes psychological, emotional, and narrative ambiguity. The story touches on illness, codependence, unspoken family trauma, and queer awakening. Lenkiewicz, who wrote Ida and Disobedience, brings her sensitivity for layered female characters, but the film’s fragmented pacing and uneven scenes prevent it from reaching deeper emotional territory.

The visuals are sunlit and carefully composed, with slow camera movement and painterly framing. These suggest intimacy and interiority, yet the storytelling keeps the audience at a distance. Dialogue is sparse, the subtext is full, but catharsis never comes.

There are moments of real beauty. The persistent sound of flies. Rose’s bitter wit. The tension between silence and emotional release. But these moments feel scattered. The film builds toward emotional intensity but often remains muted.

Despite strong individual performances, especially from Shaw, Hot Milk never quite finds its rhythm. It simmers but never reaches a boil.

Hot Milk Q&A

Grace Barber-Plentie:
Welcome, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the director of Hot Milk.

You’ve said this was a story you immediately knew you wanted to direct. What was it that spoke to you so strongly?

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
Just reading it, I felt it very strongly. It needed a female gaze and a female body behind it. I didn’t want it to feel like a Bechdel-lite piece. There was so much sound and sensuality. I could almost feel it underwater. The vibrations and the humming. I really felt like I could create that.

Grace Barber-Plentie:
Did you have any visual inspirations? The style is very evocative.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
It sort of found itself. We had an amazing cinematographer, Christopher Blaufeld. I had watched his films, along with Kelly Reichardt’s and Todd Haynes’ May December. But it came together mostly through the locations. We had incredible spaces.

Christopher kept asking me to send references, but I couldn’t really. The book was my main reference, along with a lifetime of watching cinema. I remember saying, The Theory of the Soul is interesting. He said, It’s in Berlin, and I said, Yeah. It wasn’t really connected to this film, but it made me think about the positioning of bodies and the choreography. I wanted it to feel painterly, not handheld or immediate. I wanted it to feel composed.

Grace Barber-Plentie:
One of the striking things about the novel and the film is its ambiguity. You’re never given all the answers. At any point in the writing or directing process, did you feel pressure to resolve things or were you free to leave them open?

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
We had a lot of different versions. At one point there were more answers, but as the edit went on with Mark Towns, it became more interesting to take things out. Christine Langan came into the edit and we kept playing with it. The film became more and more mysterious.

For example, Rose’s illness is more mysterious in the book. In the film, we did a lot of research into FND, functional neurological disorder, where someone cannot walk but it is not physiological. It is very real, just based in the nerves and synapses. We had a great consultant, Chris Simeon, who helped us understand that balance between reality and non-reality.

Grace Barber-Plentie:
Before we go further, I’d love to hear about the casting process. The three lead actresses are incredible.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
They are amazing. Fiona Shaw, I knew her a little from theatre. We had almost done a project before, so I asked her and she immediately said yes. At the time, it was just Christine and me on board, and once Fiona said yes, we were like, Right, we have to make this film.

I would go to her house and we would talk through the script. It was wonderful. Then I sent the script to Vicky Krieps, just because I have always admired her. I expected months of back and forth, but a message came back saying, Yes, I am interested. I like the horse and I like the script. Let’s have a chat.

I got on the phone with her and she said, Yes, I will do it. Absolutely. I was a bit stunned.

Then COVID happened. The casting process for Sofia went a bit up and down. But then, at the right moment, Emma Mackey walked into Maison Bertaux in Soho for a cup of tea to talk about the film. We sat down. It felt like a blind date. I loved her work, of course, and I just said, Look, Emma, I would absolutely love for you to do this.

She said, Well, I must say I would absolutely love to do it.

We had tea and I gave her a huge almond croissant. It looked like another planet. It felt like an awkward date. I said, Take it with you, and she said, I will. It was wonderful.

All of the cast came together beautifully. I went to Paris to persuade Vincent Pérez, who loves Christopher Blaufeld’s cinematography, and it all just clicked. You could not ask for more brilliant, supportive and creative people, both on screen and off.

Grace Barber-Plentie:
Has Deborah Levy seen the film yet?

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
Yes, she has. She read the drafts while we were working on them and she even came to Greece while we were filming. It was originally supposed to be Spain but we went to Greece because it was cheaper.

Deborah just sprang into the water. She is very much a mermaid, a real force for good. When we first met I said, Take it, do what you will. We had a few chats and she saw the film with her daughters. She has been very supportive.

Audience Member:
Hello, I really loved the film. What was it about the book that you wanted to capture and translate to the screen? And what were the challenges in doing that?

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
I wanted to translate the sweat, the mess, the sex, the love, the loss. How nothing is simple.

You might find someone you want to love, but can you actually love them? Are we capable of loving the people we choose? It is not just about finding them. It is about opening yourself up, your rib cage, and really doing it.

The relationship between Rose and Sofia was really interesting to me. What you grow up with in terms of freedom and choice. And how their codependency plays out. Sofia is hiding as much as Rose is holding her back. For me, the film is about trying to be free, which in a way feels like religion.

The challenge with the book was that so much of it is psychological, and also much funnier than the film. It has a lot of wry humour, and it is in the first person, so there is deep psychology to translate.

But the book is also very filmic. The locations and the details. As the team came together, the film started to find its own form.

Christopher’s cinematography and Andrey Pompretov’s production design brought in layers. It was a beautiful collaboration. And the cast brought their own ideas too.

If I am honest, the hardest part was getting the film off the ground. Christine Langan and Kate Glover worked so hard to make the miracle of an independent film happen.

Once we felt like, okay, this is actually going to happen, it was all momentum from there. But it took years to get the funding.

Grace Barber-Plentie:
Good question. On this side now, toward the front.

Audience Member:
Hi, I really enjoyed the film, thank you. I wanted to ask about the rage in the film, and how you portrayed anger as something positive, transformative, a catalyst for change. I really enjoyed how that played out, especially through her character. How did you direct that? Did you prompt her, or did it come naturally?

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
The actors were all very instinctive. We didn’t rehearse. They just turned up, and many of them had not met before.

Fiona and Emma did that intense final car scene on just their second day. They were both so prepared.

Emma is in practically every scene, so she really understood the emotional temperature. She would check in with me and ask, do you think it is this or that? I would say, yes, it is that. She was very good at just letting the rage happen.

Audience Member:
What did you mean by this and that? How did you and Emma communicate about those emotional shifts?

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
Emma would ask things like, is this scene about the loss of Ingrid or is it about anger at her mother? She mapped out her emotional journey incredibly carefully.

I took a more instinctive approach. I watched what they were doing and adjusted things as we went. Since we were not shooting chronologically, I tried to track Sophia’s rage. It needed to be primal and it had to come later in the story.

And honestly, I love rage. I was pretty menopausal during the shoot, so it was not hard for me to relate. I am that raging young woman. I am just 30 years older.

Anger is brilliant fuel. Envy is not so useful. But anger, that is rocket fuel. We did not try to force it.

When Emma went for the knife scene with the dog, she just flew into it. There was not any warming up. If anything, we sometimes had to bring it down and contain it.

We didn’t do many takes, and we had very little rehearsal. Emma and I spent a day in a hotel room just talking through the script.

Vicky came on board saying, I think I know this woman, and it all grew from there. It was very organic.

Audience Member:
Thank you.

Grace Barber-Plentie:
We have time for one last question. Let’s go to the front, centre.

Audience Member:
Thank you so much. That was beautiful. I am a big fan. I wanted to ask, why is it important to you to have such strong queer women both behind and in front of the camera? It really created a powerful connection for me and made the film feel truly alive.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz:
I think again it comes down to freedom and choice.

To me, even though this film is not about war or politics on the surface, it is political. Freedom is being taken away. Choice is being taken away.

So anything that interrogates that, anything that insists we have a right to our bodies, to love who we love, is essential. Whether we do it well or not is up to us and our messy, beautiful selves.

I have always admired women. I like men too, but the women in my life, especially my mother who raised me as a single parent, have shown me resilience, strength, dignity and grace.

In my work, I try to rebalance centuries where men dominated and women were sidelined.

To have three women at the centre of this story felt powerful and beautiful.

That focus on women has become really important to me, not just for the sake of balance, but because women are amazing.

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