Famously, Gene Siskel had a simple test for movies: “Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?”
Hot Milk inspires a different test: “Would this film ever have been made if it was about homely people in Rochester, Minnesota?”
It’s not a very useful test for space opera, but when applied to a drama, it forces you to ask whether the characters have any inherent interest based on the plot and dialogue, or whether a movie is leaning purely on eye candy. In the case of Hot Milk, it’s the latter.
Emma Mackey seems to invite filmmakers to believe they can rely purely upon her stormy magnetism to carry a story. In the Brontë biopic Emily (2023), Frances O’Connor assumed that somehow Mackey’s eyebrows could convey motivation and backstory. Rebecca Lenkiewicz, director and co-writer (with Deborah Levy) of Hot Milk, fills that in a bit more but generally trusts we’ll be content to watch her stunning star sulk around.
Mackey’s character Sofia has arrived on the Spanish coast with her mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), who has mortgaged her house to finance an unusual treatment for her inability to walk. That inability may or may not be psychosomatic, and the charming specialist she enlists may or may not be a quack. Lenkiewicz and Levy leave those things ambiguous, leaving us to share Sofia’s frustration with a garrulous, lonely mother whom she clearly suspects of playing for attention.
Sofia would prefer to give her attention to Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), another beautiful and idle young woman who makes out with Sofia but turns out to have very — how shall I say, European? Gen Z? — ideas about exclusivity.
Lenkiewicz presents this all with an episodic, listless energy that suggests she was needlessly worried Hot Milk was in danger of becoming a gay version of My Father the Hero if any levity was permitted to intrude. Sofia is weary, and so are we. To what end?
While Mackey is given nothing to do but look hot and bothered, Shaw has a seemingly meatier role. Shaw is well-cast as a woman struggling to master her diminished circumstances, but Lenkiewicz either doesn’t know what to do with her or doesn’t want to do anything more than establish her as a source of consternation for Sofia.
The movie’s ending addresses the central question framing the mother-daughter relationship, but does so with a splash of sensation rather than offering any real insight. If sensation is the best thing Hot Milk has to offer, this movie doesn’t have nearly enough of it.
Photos courtesy Nikos Nikolopoulos. Hot Milk is an IFC Films release.
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