A mother-daughter relationship is rarely a love story, at least not in any of the ways art has dramatized it thus far. Sure, a mother loves her daughter deeply (and vice-versa), but it is a sentiment defined by ambivalence and often laced with resentment. British writer Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel Hot Milk speaks to the very core of that ambivalence; seasoned screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, She Said) has now adapted the acclaimed book into her first foray as a director. Set during a hot and heavy summer in Almería on the southeastern coast of Spain, the blistering Hot Milk follows 25-year-old Sofia (Emma Mackey) and her partially paralyzed mother Rose (Fiona Shaw) as they navigate everyday ailing and maternal traumas, always together and somehow always apart.
“My mom stopped walking when I was four,” Sofia tells the unconventional healer Dr. Gómez (Vincent Perez), who is the reason for their Spanish trip. Rose suffers from a mysterious illness that eludes diagnosticians; her daughter’s passivity tells us this has been going on forever, effectively trapping her in a carer role. “Sofia abandoned her PhD,” Rose explains. (Mothers take precedence over anthropological research, apparently.) Speaking on behalf of one another seems a well-rehearsed routine, with Rose outweighing the competition, to no surprise. Hot Milk sets the tone of their inequality from its very opening and, for the longest time, the mother’s voice can be heard mostly offscreen, as either a demand (“Bring me a spoon”) or a reprimand (“Don’t blow smoke in my dress”). While omnipresent and omniscient, Rose is immobilized and relies on Sofia for everything. It’s a pattern familiar to many: control, oppression, and narcissistic tendencies on one side; on the other sits resignation, submission, and guilt.
Lenkiewicz, who felt very strongly about the source material when she was first approached to write the screenplay and wished to direct it as well, has an intuitive grasp on the dynamics and without a doubt found the perfect collaborators to bring this project from page to screen: cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt (frequent collaborator of Kelly Reichardt), Mark Towns (editor for Rose Glass), and the cast––Mackay, Shaw, and Vicky Krieps who portrays Sofia’s enigmatic love interest, Ingrid––fit like a glove. This adaptation places an emphasis on exteriorized emotions whose diffusion is felt throughout. They’re in the static long takes, the well-placed cuts that prevent the scene’s crescendo from spilling over, in the symphony of performances painting characters who otherwise wouldn’t fit naturally.
Thankfully, Hot Milk has been spared the usual adaptation tricks of voiceover and tropes of flashbacks or retroactive storytelling; instead it charms with emotion-led narration seeping through every shot. The first time we see Ingrid is through Sofia’s eyes: a wide shot of a figure galloping into the frame on horseback (on the beach) turns into a lower-angle close-up held for slightly longer than usual. A gaze of wonder paints the already effervescent Vicky Krieps as an otherworldly creature and her subtle smile suddenly means the world to us, as it does to Sofia. Even in the slow-burn process of getting to know one another, the two are rarely framed together until a very singular moment of physical intimacy which unlocks a new side to the protagonist. A timid kiss shared in the shadows of impending nightfall sees Sofia and Ingrid share much more than the frame––it’s easy to assume their intimacy even when they barely reveal much with words for more than half of the film’s runtime. It’s pure magic to witness a film character like Ingrid’s being so vivid and alive when everything about her is nomadic, unstable, and endlessly fascinating––the necessary ingredients for a projection or a fetish, but not a real person.
In a telling move that’s complementary to the source material, Lenkiewicz swaps the novel’s original epigraph (“It’s up to you to break the old circuits”), borrowed from French writer Hélène Cixous, for “I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful,” words embroidered on a handkerchief (Untitled [I Have Been to Hell and Back], 1996) by artist Louise Bourgeois, who used fabrics and domestic signifiers in her political installations. The gesture here is obvious, but the film doesn’t rely on what’s readily apparent; all characters are skeptics and challenge one another, even violently so.
While the film’s narrative is (deceptively) linear, it sustains a deliberate tension between the symbolic and the real––both Rose’s paralysis and Sofia’s multiple jellyfish stings can be read as metaphors for “the body keeping the score.” There’s a puzzle to be solved in this film, and one piece of it is the role of sisters––Ingrid’s and Rose’s––but the bigger picture concerns women: as mothers, daughters, and lovers. Rarely has maternal trauma been so well-dramatized on the big screen with zest, humor, and genuine appreciation of the ambivalence baked into these relationships.
Hot Milk premiered at the 2025 Berlinale.