HOT MILK - Mark Reviews Movies

Hot Milk, Independent Film Company

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 26, 2025

Something vital is missing from Hot Milk that makes the movie come across as string of unfocused subplots and meandering scenes. The core of the story, perhaps, is the relationship between a mother, who is or might only claim to be chronically ill, and daughter, who has spent most of her life caring for her mother and clearly resents what that role has done to her life. We know the first part because it seems to be the only background information we get about these characters. As for the second part, the daughter's attitude toward her mother makes that plain, and in case anyone somehow misses that, the utterly terrible ending of the movie puts a definitive point on it.

How bad is that ending? Well, it's close to repugnant on a moral level, and no matter how often writer/director Rebecca Lenkiewicz establishes and iterates the main character's feelings and the difficult relationship between this mother and daughter, the final choice here is so extreme that it still seems to come out of nowhere. Honestly, it's difficult to look at the rest of the movie without that perception being colored by how it ends. If the whole thing is building toward that scene, is there really any benefit to what comes before the finale?

There is, perhaps, if only because the central performances are strong and, even if the ultimate outcome of it is as awful it is, the main relationship here is portrayed with some insight—a good amount of it troubling. A version of this story that sincerely explores and uncomfortably questions the mother-daughter dynamic on display here might have been worthwhile. The fact that Lenkiewicz, adapting a novel by Deborah Levy, gives us the answer that the movie does in its final moments, however, only makes us question if there is any sincerity to this material.

The daughter is Sofia (Emma Mackey), and the mother is Rose (Fiona Shaw). They live in London but are currently a medical trip to a seaside town in Spain, where Rose has re-mortgaged the house the two share to rent an apartment and pay for a specialist for her condition. She feels pain acutely and, as a result, has been unable to walk for more than two decades. That second part started when Sofia was 4 years old, around the same time that her father, Rose's husband, left them, returned to Greece, and eventually married another woman.

In her mid-20s, Sofia, meanwhile, has dedicated her life to staying with and tending to Rose, even taking an on-going hiatus from college because any caretaking alternative for her mother wasn't up to the woman's standards. The relationship is fraught, but the challenges remain unspoken. Rose is demanding, ordering her daughter to give her water in pretty much every scene between the two, and stubborn, staying cooped up in the apartment—even though she can move herself in the wheelchair—whenever Sofia is out on errands, and generally unthinking and maybe uncaring about what her daughter might want.

This relationship, in other words, is dramatic enough on its own, especially as Rose's regular sessions with Gomez (Vincent Perez), the medical specialist of presumably questionable methods and qualifications, hint at some things from the mother's past and in watching Sofia feel so overwhelmed but also feel obligated to keep her emotions quiet for her mother's sake. The strange thing, then, about the script is how it keeps all of this conflict in a state of stasis. Nothing new really develops between these characters, and the movie simply repeats that dynamic over and over again.

Instead, it gives Sofia other outlets for her frustration, namely a neighbor who keeps his miserable dog chained to the roof, and the possibility of finding some kind of freedom. The latter is personified in Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a mysterious, free-spirited woman whom Sofia notices on the beach (on horseback) and who starts paying a lot of attention to our protagonist. They eventually start a love affair, but Ingrid's attention, it seems, is fleeting or spread thin among other people and her desire to be, well, free.

That connection, though, ultimately comes across as if it exists to highlight how trapped Sofia feels and to resolve in such a way that pushes the young woman further. Again, much of that sense comes from the way Hot Milk ends, because the conclusion is such a head-scratcher on multiple levels. Then again, what the movie gives us up until that ending is so thinly developed that there's not much else to take from it.

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