Emma Mackey is Queer, Withholding, and Sunstruck in Hot Milk

The heat is constant. The air is still. And somewhere between jellyfish stings and glances that last too long, Hot Milk becomes a story about queer longing that never says its name, but hums underneath everything.

Directed by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Disobedience, She Said), Hot Milk is the kind of film that doesn’t announce itself. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel, it follows Sofia (Mackey), a drifting twenty-something caught in the strange, codependent orbit of her mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), who brings her to a remote Spanish beach town in search of a cure for her unexplained illness. While Rose chases alternative treatments, Sofia wanders. She swims with jellyfish. She walks through the shimmer. She meets Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a wealthy seamstress with an ambiguous past and a horse. Everything begins to slow.

This is a film about pressure, bodily, emotional, and barely contained. Queerness in Hot Milk doesn’t arrive as a twist or confession. It lingers in gesture and atmosphere, in the way Sofia and Ingrid move around each other. Their connection resists definition, but the tension is there, humming beneath every glance.

Mackey portrays Sofia as someone held at arm’s length from her own life. There’s frustration beneath the surface, but it rarely erupts. Desire flickers, then retreats. It’s a performance built on withholding, the opposite of her sharp, articulate turn as Maeve in Sex Education. Here, she leans into silence, ambiguity, and pause. Lenkiewicz’s direction gives her space to be unreadable, and the camera lingers long enough for that ambiguity to take hold.

Fiona Shaw is acidic and half-tragic as Rose, a mother who weaponises helplessness. It’s not subtle. At one point, she claims she can’t walk but stands up when no one’s watching. Still, Shaw gives the performance enough slippage to make you wonder if Rose believes her own stories. Krieps, meanwhile, is pure soft menace. Ingrid doesn’t feel real, and maybe that’s the point. She’s fantasy. She’s freedom. Maybe.

The film premiered at the 2025 Berlinale, where it quietly held its own among louder, flashier debuts. Distributed by MUBI, it arrives in UK cinemas on July 4. This isn’t a plot-driven film. It’s about atmosphere. Interiors. That specific kind of emotional static that builds between women when nothing is said, but everything is understood.

Levy’s novel was often described as “elliptical,” and Hot Milk preserves that energy. There are entire scenes where nothing happens, but the camera lingers. Stillness becomes a kind of tension. So does silence. In one early moment, Sofia watches Ingrid ride through the surf and doesn’t move. Her mother calls her. She doesn’t answer.

If this sounds quiet, it is. But it’s also deeply charged. The queerness in Hot Milk isn’t explained, categorised, or wrapped up in an arc. It’s something you feel before you name. For audiences used to over-explanation, it might seem withholding. But that’s the point. This isn’t a story about discovering queerness. It’s about living with it. Quietly. Uneasily. Sometimes beautifully.

Hot Milk opens in UK cinemas on July 4. If you’ve ever been drawn to someone without knowing what it meant, or just want to watch Emma Mackey sweat through emotional repression, this one’s for you.