The matter-of-factness of the relationship that springs up between Sofia, (Emma Mackey) and Ingrid, (Vicky Krieps), is what distinguishes first-time director Rebecca Lenkiewicz's feature "Hot Milk" from other recent LGBTQ+ films. It begins with the kind of casual pick-up that suggests both women's gaydars are working at full throttle. Sofia is in Spain, (though the film was shot in Greece), with her domineering mother Rose, (an absolutely superb Fiona Shaw), for a 'cure' at a clinic presided over by Gomez, (Vincent Perez), since Rose can't walk and Gomez believes her problems are psychosomatic.
Fundamentally Lenkiewicz's film is about women who have no control over their lives. Though clearly independent-minded Sofia can't break free of her mother just as Rose is unable to divest herself of her own past and while Ingrid would appear to be the film's free spirit she is also in a relationship with Matty, a black man she seems happy with but almost certainly doesn't love and the movie is a little gem. Sofia is studying Margaret Mead and like Mead, Lenkiewicz is allowing us access to these characters as if we are interlopers or just eavesdroppers in their lives.
Dramatically for a lot of the time not a lot happens. Ingrid admits to killing someone 'a long time ago' which makes her character the one most prone to melodrama and there are intimations that the unorthodox clinic and Gomez and his daughter/nurse, (Patsy Ferran), aren't quite what they seem but it's ultimately Sofia who begins to unravel, not surprising you might think given she is Rose's daughter, and the film begins to play out like a thriller you can't quite get your head around. In the end what is resolved? As Hitchcock said, it's only a movie but for at least nine-tenths of its length it's a very fine one.
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