‘Hot Milk’ – Sapphic cinematic sensuality
A much more sensuous film than a sexy one
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut “Hot Milk” (IFC Films) is a fitting release for our a long hot summer. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s acclaimed novel of the same name, Lenkiewicz’s debut puts three women –Emma Mackey, Vicky Krieps, and Fiona Shaw– at the center of a life-changing European summer of parasitical relationships, intense emotions and sensual expression, trauma sharing, and a search for independence. It also makes for a pretty good queer addition to the “summer romance” sub-genre with lovers languishing with longing in the picturesque Greek beach town that the filmmakers confidently transform into idyllic Spain.
Mackey plays Sofia, a struggling anthropologist in her late 20s who spends most of her time as her mother’s full-time caregiver. Her mother Rose (Shaw)’s paralysis means she can’t walk and uses a wheelchair… other than the odd time or two a year when she can walk. Sofia is fully and completely responsible for her mom and has been since she was first paralyzed when Sofia was only four.
They trek from England to Spain to see a specialist with a rather abnormal practice. In her rare free time on the beach apart from her mother, Sofia finds herself with a gravitational-like attraction to Ingrid (Krieps), who first towers into the frame like a storybook character on a beautiful horse while riding on the beach.
Ingrid and Sofia meet almost exclusively in isolation from Rose and this seems to be part of the attraction for Sofia. It doesn’t seem that she is hiding her same-sex pursuits from her mother, but rather that caring for her mother takes so much of her time and emotional energy that Rose’s separation from her mother adds to her allure.
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