Cinema’hot Milk ‘is lost in a plot that does not follow the strength of their characters

Known to scripts who exploit with sensitivity and complexity the female universe – as Trip (2013), Disobedience (2017), Cholette (2018) and She said (2022) -, REBECCA LENKIEWICZ debut towards feature films with Hot Milk. The adaptation of the novel of Deborah Levy It proposes a symbolic, solar and restless narrative, in which two women seek, in a Spanish coastal city, healing and liberation. LENKIEWICZ It remains true to the themes that marked your career as a screenwriter, but as you take the direction as well, it gives a movie where ideas and characters are more interesting than the story that leads them.

In the center of the plot are Rose (Fiona Shaw, Water), a mysteriously sick woman and attached to a wheelchair, and her daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey, Sex education), who spent his life as a caregiver. The two travel to Almería to consult an eccentric doctor with unconventional methods. While Rose plunges into the promise of healing, Sofia is crossed by heat, summer sensuality and the thought -provoking presence of Ingrid (Vicky Krieps, Ghost plot), a traveler who makes her rethink her own existence. The scenario seems suspended in time, which favors the fabular atmosphere intended by the director.

LENKIEWICZ It builds a movie more based on symbols than by actions. The mother’s wheelchair represents emotional prison, the sea is freedom, and the female body is a territory of conflict and desire. All of this is put, but rarely developed organically. Hot Milk He wants to discuss topics such as dependence, desire, repression and the weight of maternal expectations, but ends up addressing everything in a diffuse way. The narrative is vague, and although there are moments of visual beauty and emotional intensity, the script does not offer enough structure for these elements to gain real dramatic strength.

This is where the movie reveals its biggest problem: it has strong characters, with the potential to carry dense plots, but the direction prefers to keep everything at the level of the suggestion. The rhythm is slow – and not in the contemplative sense, but so that it generates disconnection. At certain times, it seems that it is the viewer who needs to build alone what the movie hesitates to say. Even the cathartic end, it comes more as a relief than as a well -crafted climax.

In short, Hot Milk It is a work full of powerful intentions and images that never completely resolved. The direction bets on metaphor as a narrative engine, but forgets that symbols only work when they have something solid around them. The result is a movie where the rich, complex, intriguing characters end up wandering a story that does not accompany them. It is the feeling that there was a good drama there, but it evaporated in the heat of the Spanish summer.

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