Hot Milk

Hot Milk is the kind of movie where it's visual presentation, strong performances and interesting concept is surrounded, but the lack of emotional weight within the characters and struggling structure fails to achieve it's potential.

The beautiful camerawork and colors really helps to establish the setting and the atmosphere. Offering some good insights of what the director wants to display and discuss. The performances from Emma Mackey, Vicky Krieps, and Fiona Shaw were all pretty good and does offer some solid chemistry between one another. I did enjoy some of the concepts that the writing was offering, especially some of the developing dynamics between mother and daughter and conflicts of connection.

However, that is where the movie struggles because the writing doesn't fully develop it's characters throughly, enough to the point where the emotional weight and tone doesn't really connect. Which made it a bit difficult to engage with the characters at certain points. Alongside with some awkward dialogue.

Overall, it has some strong moments but it's not something I would see again soon.

I was enticed to see this film because I saw the cast and read the synopsis, and i knew it was based upon the book with the same title. I should note that I've not read said book, but others by the author, and greatly appreciate her style, and her ability to create vivid characters and explore complex relationships/human emotions.

The reviews I glanced at prior to going in were pretty negative, and most seemed unimpressed. This made me a bit worried (I had invited a friend and I so hate feeling like I'm putting someone else through a bad film!), and prepared me, perhaps, to be disappointed by a film I had been positively anticipating.

However, Hot Milk oozes atmosphere, and the performances were excellent. I don't understand how a film with this level of acting and cinematography (even if the story itself isn't to someone's taste) can be given a score below 5/10?!?!? Fiona Shaw is outstanding at embodying a deeply damaged, infuriating, and toxic mother/woman. Whilst Emma Mackey nails her role as the pent up, understandably resentful, manipulated young women, who is stiffled by her mother's unresolved trauma.

This is a film that made me feel a lot. It had themes that resonated, and I felt the intensity that Lenkiewicz's directing and writing conjured up.

I understand that this is not going to appeal to those who like a film that has a story with a clear trajectory set out. This film does require patience and concentration and openness. But it rewards those who emotionally invest and commit (I think, anyway!?). I hope more people give this a chance and ignore the critics. I think it will be elevated in estimation when it's audience find it. I hope so.

This film hit a nerve.

It's not about explosive drama, it's about the quiet, suffocating violence of emotional entanglement: love laced with dependency, boundaries blurred. The daughter is stuck in a role she never chose, blamed for not doing enough, while slowly disappearing in the process.

The constant reaching for water feels symbolic, an effort to swallow discomfort, avoid truth, dilute tension. Conversations dissolve, emotions go undigested.

Visually stunning in its discomfort: blinding brightness clashes with sudden darkness. You're never quite at ease, and that's the point.

And then, unexpectedly, some moments are... funny? Not laugh-out-loud, but absurd in a way that's either painfully relatable or too surreal to take seriously. You're not always sure if the humor is intentional - which somehow makes it even better. Like dissociation in cinematic form.

Maybe too niche or emotionally raw for some. But if you know this kind of silence, the kind that weighs more than words, this film will find you.

This does come to quite an head in the last five minutes and there's a solid performance from Fiona Shaw at times too, but otherwise I struggled to see much point in this rather shallow drama. "Rose" (Shaw) hasn't been able to walk for almost twenty years so has mortgaged her house so she can attend a specialist clinic run by "Gomez" (Vincent Perez). She is accompanied by her daughter "Sophia" (Emma Mackey) who, whilst she obviously loves her mother, is clearly a bit fed up being her constant carer. I think that fairly swiftly we can deduce something of the nature of the older woman's problems, but that isn't really the crux of this story. That has more to do with "Sophia" and her relationship with "Ingrid" (Vicky Krieps) whose enigmatic personality and character entrance and infuriate her, even more so when her friend "Matty" (Yang Gael) shows up to muddy the already pretty confused waters. With this uninteresting scenario bubbling along lethargically and Shaw just complaining about the water the whole time, we are now largely left to furnish the story with our own interpretation of what we think is most likely going on and then, certainly in my case, ask just why I ought to care one way or the other. The raffia-mafia have had a hand in the characterisation of "Ingrid" and I'm afraid that even though it's filmed on a lovely Greek beach I just couldn't get into it. It's had some decent effort put into the production, but it will look fine on a winter's evening on the television. Not so much hot, more tepid.

With a strange illness, Rose (Fiona Shaw) and her daughter embark on a journey to the Spanish coast to find a cure, and along the way the daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey) discover another reality far from her controlling mother.

I watched this simply because I have a thing for Emma Mackey, who looks very like Margot Robbie, but prettier.

But even that draw could not encourage me to watch to the end of the film. It is so excruciatingly boring and pointless.

There's lots of nipples for no apparent reason, there's constant smoking cigarettes which is vile and off putting, there's a dog barking literally throughout the entire film, and there's a rude Ingrid (Vicky Krieps) who speaks so indistinctly and quietly that I had to turn subtitles on.

After 1 hour nothing had happened. People small talked about nothing, Rose's doctor made the most bizarre statements and asked ridiculous questions, Sofia smoked and showed nipples, Ingrid didn't really do anything, and I'm unsure why the doctor's daughter Julieta (Patsy Ferran) even had a part.

All in all it was lovely seeing Emma Mackey, she's always a pleasure to watch, but the film is absolutely coma inducing and doesn't have a point at all. I rated it a 2 and that's only because Emma Mackey was in it otherwise it would have been a 1.