A film by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
With: Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, Vicky Krieps, Vincent Perez, Patsy Ferran, Yann Gael, Paris Thomopoulos, Korina Gougouli
Rose and her daughter Sofia travel to the Spanish seaside town of Almería to consult with the shamanic Dr. Gomez, a physician who could possibly hold the cure to Rose’s mystery illness, which has left her bound to a wheelchair. But in the sultry atmosphere of this sun-bleached town Sofia, who has been trapped by her mother’s illness all her life, finally starts to shed her inhibitions, enticed by the persuasive charms of enigmatic traveller Ingrid.
Our rate: **
A sensual first film, albeit one dealing with a subject that is very much in the political spotlight these days: the right to die, to let oneself die. Adapted from Déborah Levy‘s best-selling novel of the same name, the film focuses on a huis-clos between a young woman, Sofia, who is soon caught up in her love life, and her mother. Both live isolated lives as foreigners on the Andalusian coast, and their aspirations, and even impulses, are at odds with the land. The mother sees herself ending her days there, in the once-loved desert, while the daughter sees it as a potential home for a new beginning. Disturbingly, the setting plays an essential role here, in the manner of the dunes in François Ozon‘s Under the sand, with each of the protagonists being foreigners, probably justifying the highly international and multilingual casting (Emma Mackay plays Sofia, Fiona Shaw from Ireland plays her mother Rose, Vicky Krieps her lover and Vincent Perez, a seemingly Franco-Spanish doctor). The stark contrast between the two women is both subject and setting. Their relationship, toxic to the core for both, imprisons them. The mother – Fiona Shaw, reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling in Ozon’s Under the Sand – the similarity between the 2 films also applies to the narrative, which maintains a psychological mystery that is only resolved, in an open-ended way that leaves room for interpretation, in the film’s final moments – is determined to keep her daughter close to her, no matter how difficult her disability, and even more so her cantankerous, grumpy, authoritarian and castrating character, makes life for her. A doctor, trying to help her regain the use of her legs, notably through psychotherapeutic means, discovers that the relationship between the two hides an unspoken, traumatic element. At his side, the daughter experiences other troubles, which urge her to emancipate herself, to let go, to free herself from the grip of what she considers a situation, but which she gradually comes to question, blaming her mother. She will fall in love with a white knight, Vicky Krieps, almost straight out of an Alice Rochwacher film, free but traumatized – the exact opposite of the actress in her real life, she will say in a press conference, but is quick to contradict herself by confessing a mental duplicity that necessarily brings her closer to the character – but will also finally resolve to visit her father, to better understand her mother and her secrets. Playing with disturbing psychological material, Hot Milk also focuses on the exterior, on sensuality, on the desire that is born in Sofia, and that which she arouses in others. It’s the same cold heat we experienced a few years ago in Under the sand.
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