Cinema: Actress Emma Mackey in search of emancipation in "Hot Milk"

On a sweltering summer day, Rose (Fiona Shaw) and her daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey) travel to Almeria, a seaside resort in southern Spain.

They come to consult the enigmatic Dr. Gómez (Vincent Perez), who could cure Rose's illness, who is confined to a wheelchair. Sofia, until now hampered by a possessive mother, gives in to the charms of Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a globetrotter who lives by her own rules.

As Sofia emancipates herself, Rose can't bear to see her daughter slip away from her - and the old resentments that weigh on their relationship will burst into the open...

Romance with Vicky Krieps

Known primarily as a screenwriter – for example, in 2022 she wrote the script for She Said , about the investigation by two New York Times journalists who exposed the Weinstein affair and launched the #MeToo movement at the same time – Rebecca Lenkiewicz is making her directorial debut with a film about a thirty-something woman's quest for freedom under the thumb of her mother.

Not that she is tyrannical, but she is possessive and dependent, unable to get rid of a past trauma that she does not dare to admit.

Alongside this confrontation, set against the backdrop of a generational conflict between the magnetic Emma Mackey, who carries the film, and the charismatic Fiona Shaw, the director slips a love story into her story when Sofia meets a free woman played by Vicky Krieps. These are interesting interludes, even if this romance struggles to stray from the beaten track.

By trying to deal with too many themes, such as illness, love, emancipation, without managing to organize them well enough, Hot Milk struggles to move forward, to the point where the new filmmaker no longer knows which direction to take, nor what outcome to give to her drama.

This is evidenced by the last scene, which is clumsy and weighs down this work, which would have benefited from being more restrained to have a real impact on the viewer.

BY REBECCA LENKIEWICZ (Great Britain), with Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, Vincent Perez... Drama. 1h32. Our rating: 2/5.