- Emma Mackey, Vicky Krieps, Fiona Shaw
- July 4th 2025
- 93
- Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey play a mother and daughter who go to Spain to seek specialist medical treatment.
From Killing Eve to Bad Sisters and Andor, Fiona Shaw has been all over our TV screens in recent years. Despite her packed schedule, she has still managed to find time to squeeze in a few films, like her latest release, Hot Milk.
Based on the novel of the same name by Deborah Levy, Hot Milk follows Rose (Fiona Shaw) and her daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey) during a trip to Spain.
They have come to the country to see a specialist to hopefully get an explanation for Rose’s mysterious long-term illness or psychosomatic condition, which has left her wheelchair-bound for years.
During their stay, twentysomething Sofia, who feels trapped as her mother’s carer, meets and becomes infatuated with Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a distraction from her everyday reality.
The most interesting element of the film is the mother-daughter dynamic, which we slowly learn more about as the film progresses.
Writer-director Rebecca Lenkiewicz carefully peels back the layers of these two and offers us more context to explain the state of their relationship in the present.
However, she stops short of giving us all of the answers, opting instead to make a frustratingly elusive and ambiguous film that is too slow and meandering to really capture one’s attention.
The erotic romance plot isn’t as strong as the mother-daughter story, and you might possibly spend those scenes waiting for the film to return to the good stuff. The romance simply isn’t convincing, and a comforting companionship would have been more believable.
The biggest reason to watch Hot Milk is Shaw and Mackey’s impressive performances. Shaw plays a challenging, cantankerous woman dealing with a lot of repressed trauma, while Mackey’s Sofia is filled with resentment and pent-up anger and ready to escape.
This tension between them is far more interesting than the romance, which is given too much screen time.
Hot Milk features terrific performances, but they are let down by a film that is too slow and ambiguous to really be enjoyed. You will walk away from the film with so many questions!
In cinemas from Friday 4th July.
By Hannah Wales.
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