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‘Hot Milk’ Review: A Wispy Mystery Masks Deeper Trauma in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Mother-Daughter Psychodrama
Without the narrator's voice to guide things, the sunstruck adaptation of Deborah Levy’s novel fails to articulate what’s frustrating its protagonist.
Like the book (but lacking its easy stream-of-consciousness style), “Hot Milk” is told from the perspective of Rose’s daughter, the dutiful — and beautiful — mid-20s Sofia (Emma Mackey), who put her anthropology studies on hold in order to accompany her mother to Spain, where a healer named Gomez (Vincent Perez) is trying a more holistic approach. When not asking Sofia to arrange this or that excursion, the elderly woman — whom Shaw portrays as a human gargoyle, scowling through her anguish — whines about the insects and the heat and her daughter’s perceived lack of ambition. For audiences, however, it’s the disruptive magnetic force that pulls Sofia away from everything she ought to be doing with her time in Spain, dominating even a side trip to Greece, where her estranged father (Vangelis Mourikis) offers disconcerting insights.
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