Hot Milk, the directorial debut of Ida screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is a beguiling adaptation of Deborah Levy's eponymous Booker-shortlisted novel. Lenkiewicz's film, which premiered at the Berlinale and was selected for last month's BFI Flare, examines the knotty relationship between Sofia (Emma Mackey) and her controlling single mother Rose (Fiona Shaw), who are staying in an apartment in the Spanish coastal city of Almeria. But despite the sun-dappled locale, this is no holiday: Rose is receiving treatment from a local doctor, Gómez (Vincent Perez), for an undiagnosed condition that confines her to a wheelchair.
As Sofia seeks some respite from her rather suffocating domestic situation, she encounters—and becomes enamoured with—flighty bohemian Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), yet this dalliance eventually proves as frustrating as the fraught relationship with her mother. Sofia decides to mix things up by heading to Greece (which is in fact where the entire film was shot) to visit her father (Vangelis Mourikis), who now has a new family and is unable to provide much in the way of the fulfilment she so obviously craves. In a development that underlines Rose's extremely manipulative nature, Sofia is abruptly recalled from her Greek sojourn.
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Clearly, Rose is a very damaged individual, and it's implied that her symptoms are largely psychosomatic. Yet Shaw's immense, nuanced performance leads us to both pity and scorn this troubled soul, who dismisses the incremental academic progress made by Sofia while simultaneously cherishing it as a means to infantilise her daughter, therefore preventing her from growing up and flying the nest. For her part, Sofia—whose doctorate is currently on hold, at least partly because of Rose's treatment—alternates between dutifully caring for her mother and barely tolerating her endless, grating requests for suitable drinking water.
Mackey, hitherto best known for the Netflix series Sex Education, responds to the marker laid down by Shaw and delivers a turn to match that of her seasoned co-star, while Luxembourgish actress Krieps is good value in a rare supporting role. Given that Levy's book is one in which much hinges on Sofia's interior life, translating it to the screen is no easy task. When reviewing a title from last year's Flare—Orlando, My Political Biography—I wrote about the challenges of adapting such novels; as with that film, the haptic, hypnotic Hot Milk takes a sideways approach to adaptation, and the results are highly impressive.
