Hot Milk (Emma Mackey) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | A hot mess - video Dailymotion

Film Brain

Film Brain reviews this adaptation of the book, which despite the efforts of Emma Mackey, Vicky Krieps, and Fiona Shaw, has gone badly awry and become a beautiful but empty husk.

Transcript

00:00Emma Mackie sizzles in Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy's 2016 novel,

00:05but the film itself is a bit of a hot mess.

00:08Set on the Spanish coast, Mackie plays Sophia,

00:11who spends much of her time taking care of her mother Rose, played by Fiona Shaw,

00:15who lives with chronic pain from a strange illness that keeps her mostly confined to a wheelchair.

00:20But when Sophia encounters seamstress Ingrid, played by Vicky Krebs,

00:24it awakens something fiery, even dangerous, in Sophia.

00:29The film is the direct-to-all debut of playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz,

00:32who has previously written scripts for films like Ida, Colette, She Said,

00:36and most recently The Salt Path,

00:38but her writing in direction hasn't really translated the book to screen very well.

00:43This is a story where all three of the main characters are damaged,

00:46mostly stowing from traumatic events in their childhood that have been repressed rather than healed.

00:51Mackie does solid work as the frustrated Sophia,

00:54who has spent so long putting her mother's needs over her own

00:57that she hasn't really developed, so Sophia is quiet but volatile,

01:01and prone to bouts of jealousy and rage.

01:04But the real standout performance is Fiona Shaw's overbearing mother,

01:08but she finds some sympathy for her that keeps the character from becoming a stereotype.

01:13Rose's illness is perplexing and exasperating, maybe even psychosomatic,

01:19almost like a physical manifestation of a lifetime of slights and resentments.

01:23And she's seeing a doctor play by Vincent Perez, who may or may not be a quack given his unorthodox methods,

01:29like instructing Rose to write an enemies list over actual physical treatment.

01:34But a lot of the novel seems to have been lost or discarded on its way to the screen,

01:38like the film dropping the economic turmoil of the 2008 financial crash that served as a backdrop,

01:44and echoed the tension of the mother and daughter.

01:47And Lenkiewicz has taken a minimalist approach to her adaptation, amplifying its ambiguities,

01:52but now it's so sparse and elusive that it's more off-putting than intriguing.

01:57The book was written from the POV of Sophia, an aspiring anthropologist studying and questioning

02:02everything and herself, but it's hard to get across that interiority in a film,

02:07especially when you don't use voiceover narration.

02:10I never felt like I understood Sophia, and Creeps' Ingrid is stuck with a poorly defined smudge of a character.

02:17And despite all the heat, sweat and touch that's very sensual, this isn't really a romance,

02:24nor did I buy it as one.

02:25And as a dark coming-of-age story, the attempts to add a sense of threat to Sophia are too

02:30intermittent and sporadic when it really should be building towards a boiling point.

02:35The end result is a lot of pretty people in beautiful scenery doing confusing and inexplicable

02:40things that you don't really care about, and I found it tryingly slow and empty.

02:45Give up.

02:46Give up.

02:46Yeah.

02:46I don't know.

02:46Yeah.

02:47I don't know.

02:48I think this is so sticky.

02:48Let's see.

02:50I don't know.

02:53Poki ish.

02:53PokiI.

02:54Well, there's 400.

02:55Phen Mes.

02:55Oki.

02:56And we have just left it when it comes to Evangelical designed for the speed.

02:59Here I am에.

03:00Here we see.

03:01How come back.

03:02I think a lot of years found it in a place for the gravity.

03:04Do you think that this is like a separate space?

03:05Can you get what I have even somewhere else?

03:06Where I was like, inbound?

03:07Yeah.

03:08I'm on deck of the highway.

03:10There it was too big.

03:10There's just awesome.

Hot Milk (Emma Mackey) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | A hot mess

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