Hot Milk (2025) Parents Guide

Hot Milk is Rated R by Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for language, some sexuality and brief nudity.

Hot Milk (2025) Review

There’s something quietly suffocating about Hot Milk not in a bad way, but in that deliberate, psychological sense where the sun is too bright, the air too dry, and every silence says more than words could. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut is based on Deborah Levy’s celebrated novel, and while it doesn’t serve everything neatly, it does simmer with emotion, mystery, and longing.

The Story & What It Tries to Say:

The story follows Sofia Papastergiadis (Emma Mackey), a 25-year-old anthropology graduate stuck in a strange kind of limbo. She’s intelligent and observant, but emotionally stunted devoted entirely to her mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), who suffers from an unexplained paralysis in her legs. It’s not quite clear what Rose’s condition is, or if it’s even real. That uncertainty is intentional. Is she ill? Or is she performing illness? And worse does Sofia secretly want her to be?

Together, they travel to a dusty seaside village in southern Spain, chasing the promise of healing. They arrive at the clinic of a charismatic and slippery doctor, Gómez, whose treatments feel somewhere between science and snake oil. He prescribes sun, movement, a touch of mystery healing as theatre. But Sofia, who has spent most of her life as her mother’s caretaker and emotional hostage, begins to fracture under the weight of so much ambiguity.

As her days stretch out under the Spanish sun, she begins wandering, emotionally and physically. She meets Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a confident, bohemian German woman with a pet dog and a free spirit. Ingrid is everything Sofia is not uninhibited, sensual, bold. Their flirtation quickly turns into something deeper, and Sofia begins exploring parts of herself that have long been buried beneath duty and doubt. There’s an affair with a man, too Juan, a local lifeguard. But the emotional intensity lies between Sofia and Ingrid, and what that connection unearths in her.

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And yet, Rose remains the constant pull. Always needing, always watching. The film becomes a quiet power struggle: mother and daughter locked in a passive-aggressive war of need, guilt, and love. Is Sofia abandoning her mother or finally becoming herself? Does love always come wrapped in obligation?

Hot Milk is a coming-of-age story, but not in the traditional sense. It’s about the long, painful process of psychological weaning the difficult, unglamorous birth of selfhood. It touches on identity, gender roles, sexuality, and freedom, all through an abstract, moody lens. Some viewers may crave more clarity or resolution. But the film resists neat arcs because life, especially the emotional kind, rarely offers them.

Performances & Characters

Let’s talk about Fiona Shaw first because she’s phenomenal. As Rose, she’s biting and brittle, playing a character who is both tragic and manipulative. You never quite know if you should feel sorry for her or suspicious of her, and that’s the point. Shaw navigates that tension effortlessly, giving us someone who is sharp-tongued and enigmatic but never cartoonish.

Emma Mackey carries much of the film’s emotional weight, and it’s a surprisingly internal performance. Her Sofia is closed-off, often unreadable, but never dull. There’s a sadness to her a kind of emotional malnutrition that becomes more obvious the longer we spend with her. She doesn’t “explode” into some grand catharsis, and that restraint might frustrate some, but I found it haunting. Her journey is about subtle shifts, not sweeping transformations.

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Then there’s Vicky Krieps as Ingrid mysterious, earthy, magnetic. It’s easy to see how someone like Sofia, starved of intimacy and affirmation, could be drawn to her. But Krieps avoids turning Ingrid into a mere fantasy figure. She’s charming but aloof, sometimes dismissive, and you get the sense she’s just as emotionally unavailable as anyone else in Sofia’s life. Their scenes crackle with tension and desire, but also with the ache of misunderstanding.

The triangle between these three women Sofia, Rose, Ingrid is where the real drama lies. Romantic subplots with men come and go, but it’s the shifting loyalties, frustrations, and yearnings between these women that form the emotional spine of the film.

Direction, Visuals & Pacing

Rebecca Lenkiewicz makes an impressive debut behind the camera. Best known for her work as a playwright and screenwriter (Ida, Colette), she brings a distinctly literary touch to her directing every frame feels considered, and silence often speaks louder than dialogue.

The cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt is hypnotic. That sun-drenched, bone-dry palette becomes its own character burning, blinding, exposing. The jellyfish motif, recurring throughout the film, is a poetic symbol of beauty and danger. One scene in particular Sofia walking barefoot across scorching sand while carrying her mother feels almost biblical. There’s a mythic quality to it, evoking ideas of burden, martyrdom, and the bitter weight of love.

The pacing is languid, sometimes verging on slow. There are long, meditative stretches where not much “happens” in a traditional sense but that’s the nature of this kind of film. It wants you to feel time passing, to live in the discomfort of ambiguity. For some viewers, this will be frustrating. For others, it’ll be immersive.

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There’s also a dreamlike quality to the editing memories and present moments often blend, conversations trail off, and the line between desire and delusion becomes slippery. This isn’t a linear emotional journey it’s more like swimming in someone else’s subconscious.

Hot Milk (2025) Parents Guide

Sexual Content & Nudity: Sofia has romantic and sexual interactions with both a male lifeguard and, more significantly, a woman named Ingrid. Their scenes are sensual and suggestive, with a few moments of nudity—nothing explicit or pornographic, but the camera does linger with purpose.

These encounters aren’t meant for titillation. They’re emotionally significant, revealing who Sofia is beneath her lifelong caretaking role and hinting at her fluid, possibly queer identity.

There’s also some brief non-sexual nudity, including bathing scenes and moments on the beach.

Violence: No physical violence. But that doesn’t mean there’s no harm. Emotional manipulation and psychological strain are constant throughout.

Language: The film contains moderate use of adult language, most of it organic and situational. Expect a few F-bombs, some emotionally charged dialogue, and the kind of raw, sometimes biting language that emerges in tense family dynamics. Fiona Shaw’s character, in particular, wields words like weapons—her sarcasm and bitterness are a key part of the emotional undercurrent. This isn’t a film full of yelling or over-the-top cursing, but when strong language is used, it lands with emotional weight.

Substance Use: Virtually none. There’s no depiction of drug use, and alcohol is minimal, if present at all

Age Recommendation: 17+ is safest, 16+ with discretion.

Conclusion

Hot Milk is a mood. It’s not the kind of film you watch while checking your phone or looking for escapism. It asks for patience, curiosity, and maybe even a second watch. But if you give yourself over to it, there’s something deeply affecting here—a portrait of female relationships that is raw, complicated, and, crucially, unsanitized.

It’s not perfect. Some emotional beats feel muted, and certain subplots don’t fully land. But the performances are magnetic, the direction assured, and the atmosphere completely enveloping.

This isn’t a film for everyone—but it’s absolutely for someone. If you’ve ever felt trapped in a relationship you didn’t know how to leave—whether romantic, familial, or even just with your own past—this story might hit closer to home than you expect.