Hot Milk is a sultry, sun-bleached meditation on mothers, daughters, and the wounds that keep us tethered to family. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel and directed by longtime screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz in her striking feature debut, Hot Milk is less a conventional drama and more a mood board floating through trauma, longing, and estrangement like sea foam on a wild tide.

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At the center is Sofia (Emma Mackey), a PhD-bound anthropology student who follows her mother Rose (a phenomenal Fiona Shaw) to a coastal town in Spain in search of treatment for Rose’s mysterious paralysis; she’s in a wheelchair but refuses to discuss the trauma that may be keeping her there. Instead, she zones out, shuts off, or slips into a childlike regression while Sofia blurs the line between caretaker and daughter.

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Sofia, meanwhile, drifts like the sea. When she’s not tending to Rose, she’s wandering the luminous streets of Almería, framed longingly by cinematographer Agnes Godard, whose camera finds intimacy in sunburnt solitude and silence.

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It’s in this haze that Sofia meets Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a mercurial German expat whose relationship with Sofia toggles between romantic tension and icy disdain. There’s also Dr. Gomez (Vincent Perez), the enigmatic physician who tries – perhaps futilely – to unlock the mental block behind Rose’s condition.

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The film hints at family fractures, an estranged father, and deep-seated emotional paralysis, but it doesn’t tidy up its themes for mass consumption. 

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Don’t come here looking for plot. Hot Milk isn’t interested in narrative payoff or tidy emotional arcs. This is a vibes movie through and through. Dialogue is sparse, and meaning often lives in sideways glaces into mirrors, across courtyards, out into the sea. 

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Mackey delivers a standout performance by doing almost nothing, but doing it with intent. She’s cerebral, melancholic, and beautifully adrift – an anthropologist not just of human cultures, but of her own stunted emotional life.

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It’s worth noting just how European this film feels. The pace is languid, the storytelling amorphous. The adaptation’s restraint – pared down almost to silence at times – might surprise those expecting more novelistic exposition. But Lenkiewicz trusts the performances and the atmosphere.

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As a debut feature, it’s impressively self-assured. Lenkiewicz shows she knows how to create a cinematic space that breathes. The stillness, the silence, the heat – they all serve the story and set the tone. Yes, it’s slow and abstract. But it’s also sumptuous and thoughtful.

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Hot Milk is a mood piece, a film of gazes, glimmers, and unsaid things. It won’t be for everyone, but for those who can sink into its rhythms, there’s real emotional and aesthetic richness. It doesn’t walk, but it floats. And, sometimes, that’s exactly what a good film should do.