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You Can Never (Maybe?) Break the Chain: Rebecca Lenkiewicz on Berlinale 2025 Premiere Hot Milk
Vicky Krieps and Emma Mackey in Hot Milk Spanish seaside entanglements, a combustive mother-daughter relationship, mysterious, painful malaise, the veiled threat of healing and new currents of love trail Ingrid (Vicky Krieps). Nearby, watching her life pass by is Sofia (Emma Mackey), a doctoral student in anthropology and caregiver since she was a young girl to her defiant mother Rose (Fiona Shaw), mostly restricted to a wheelchair.
A story of self discovery, queer kindling and medical melancholy among these three fascinating women in a sun-baked setting, Hot Milk, premiering at the 75th Berlinale, is one of the most buzzed new titles in the Competition section. The directorial debut of well known British playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, She Said), the film is an adaptation of twice-Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel of the same name. Catching up with Lenkiewicz after the world premiere, I spoke to her about the adaptation process, the subjectivity of the characters, the story’s academic roots in anthropology, the use of intimacy coordinators and the representation of disability.
Filmmaker: You mentioned in the press notes that at the time you came to this project, you were frustrated with the writing and screenwriting aspects of your career. Could you say a little bit more about that?
Lenkiewicz: I’ve written for decades for theater and screen, and I love it. But with screen more than theater, there was always a sense of separation. When the script goes away, it’s often a careful separation, because you’ve been writing with the director, you know that it’s in great hands. But nevertheless, something departs, and you don’t see it again until it’s on the screen and it’s always a shock—a beautiful shock, but I really wanted to be in from start to finish, to be part of the creative process post-script. In theater, you’re involved in rehearsals, so at least you feel involved. I’d been thinking about directing for a long time and then this project was brought me just for adaptation, and I said “Yes, as long as I can direct.” It just felt very natural to say it. I did come to a point where the politics of holding one’s tongue was quite hard [laughs].
Filmmaker: Do you remember the very first thing you wrote or jotted down—maybe it was a scribble, or something more formal—when you began working on this project?
Lenkiewicz: I think that I wrote about a cement factory. There has to be a cement factory and a road. The visual language, which is in the book as well, is that there is industry next to nature. So, it was about the texture of the film rather than a line about [Rose or Sofia, the main characters]. It was like tasting the landscape.
Filmmaker: Do you remember what you wrote this on? Was it, for example, on a Word document?
Lenkiewicz: What I will do is I’ll read the book, and then I like a student, underline certain lines. I’ll do an asterisk and then make notes in the back of the novel, then transcribed the notes into a Word document. I’m sure some people write voicenotes. But I sometimes write on just bits of paper and inevitably lose them, so I have to be a bit more organized.
Filmmaker: Deborah Levy, who wrote the novel of which this is an adaptation, is a twice-Booker-prize-shortlisted author, so I’m sure there was some kind of weight when you were adapting it. Was there any part of the novel that you found compelling and charming but chose not to adapt?
Lenkiewicz: Yes, the character of Gomez in the book is more flamboyant. He’s more like a shaman than our Gomez. That was particular to [the actor] Vincent Perez, because when we talked about him playing Gomez, he told me that he’d met a real healer and how that was for him. And I thought, “We need to incorporate that.” If you’re casting an actor as a healer, and they have met a healer, let’s use that rather than try and replicate the character in the book. So, even things like his clothes were different. In the book, he had a gold tooth, a pinstriped suit and was very striking. The clinic was all marble with a great breast-shaped dome. So we changed things like that. [Spoilers] And then more importantly, the ending. In the book, Sofia tests her mother by leaving her on the road, and we see that Rose gets away from there, but ultimately she gets some results back and has cancer, and she’s going to die. In the film, the ending is more ambiguous. You make your own mind up [about what happens to Rose].[End spoilers]
Filmmaker: I am fascinated by the fact that Sofia is pursuing her PhD in Anthropology. I’m sure when you were thinking of Sofia’s backstory, you thought about why anthropology interested Sofia?
Lenkiewicz: From a very early age, human behavior has been quite extreme for Sofia. Rose is in pain. Her father is Greek and leaves when she’s four, then her mother stops walking. Those are seismic events in a child’s life. She becomes a carer for her mother, so she’s very much a watcher and a carer. There must be a lot of times she spends wheeling her mother around, or parking her for a doctor’s appointment. In that time she’s waiting and watching, and I think that’s the stuff of anthropology in terms of human behavior. Sofia also has a keen and brilliant mind and is interested in human creatures, why they do what they do, because her mother is a puzzle. So, maybe she’s trying to excavate some answers to the problem of her mother.
Filmmaker: Researching Margaret Mead, one of the famous anthropologists that Sofia is inspired by, I found that exactly a century ago, Mead traveled to Samoa and spoke to many Samoan women about their sexual lives. Why do you think Sofia is fascinated by Mead and how else does Mead and her work suffuse the film?
Lenkiewicz: I think it’s this sense of, can we break a chain? Sofia is trying to break a cycle, so Margaret Mead saying “We repeat, we repeat,” that’s what’s fascinating her. A lot of the things in the film are repetitive: the dog barking, the sound of the sea, the wind. Nature is there, which is cyclical, and then our natures—can we ever survive trauma or a bad childhood? Can we survive our parents if they are difficult?
Filmmaker: I also love how, in the interstices of the film and in the end credits, you have black and white, almost-found footage or documentary-style footage of women participating in ceremony and rituals. Then, somewhere in the middle of the film Sofia is walking through the town, and she stops to look at the women dancing, as a part of a montage-like sequence. Those are very clear cinematic choices. Could you talk a little bit about how you arrived at those and whether they were part of the adaptation?
Lenkiewicz: The Balinese dancing was very much from Margaret Mead, a documentary she made. It’s a ritual Mead narrates about the women who go into a trance dance. They have a sharp stick. They don’t impale themselves, but they almost do, so it’s a very dangerous but euphoric trance dance that young and older women go into until they faint or are brought out of it. It’s a ritual about a mother, a witch and a dragon. So, it felt very potent to Sofia and Rose, and it’s something that Sofia is fascinated by because of the themes. The flamenco dancers are in the novel and I think it’s very beautiful. Sofia walks past young girls and just sees their expressions, then when she comes back a little later, it’s teenage adolescent girls. That feeling of time going, of innocence being here and then gone, we wanted to create that.
Filmmaker: Emma Mackey, who I first saw in Sex Education, has such expressive face. She has the harder task, I would imagine, of having less dialogue, especially in the beginning, when you focus so much on her face. Could give an example of a scene or a moment where you gave her very particular direction when she is not saying anything? Or, alternatively, a scene where you gave very little direction and just let her play the part?
Lenkiewicz: Emma is an incredible actress, and she’s forensic in her research and notes. In the script, her psychological journey is marked by what temperature she’s at in [each] scene. We talked through the scenes in a hotel room for a day, but we didn’t rehearse, and none of the actors met each other before they were on. Emma did the first week of scenes alone, so that was a week of just watching Emma in different situations.
Really, Emma’s so instinctive that I wouldn’t say, “Look out here” or “Look there.” There was maybe a question occasionally at the beginning of, “How hurt does she feel?” or “Do you think she feels angry?” We would talk that through very briefly. But Emma was really just on it, and it was joy watching her. Regarding the geography of the room in the scene where Rose is talking about walking up a mountain, Sofia has very little to say. She’s just listening. I said, “Emma, do you want to be here or there?” And Emma said, “No, I want my back to my mother. I’m listening to her, but I’m not looking at her.” Your own face changes when you’re not listening to someone. So, the input of the actors was beautiful.
Filmmaker: I remember that scene and thinking that was an interesting way to frame the actors.
Lenkiewicz: Interestingly, we edited it, and Emma in that scene was playing something where she thought something had happened in this previous scene, and I jumped that scene to another one and it survived that jump, because it still felt fine. Emma was [surprised].
Filmmaker: Rose’s malaise or disability is very specific. Our understanding alongside the characters’ understanding of it changes throughout the film. Moreover, in the last seven or eight years there’s a lot of focus on the representation of disability in film. Was it clear-cut in the materials that you were adapting from what kind of disability it was and, more generally, how did you figure out how to represent that disability on the screen?
Lenkiewicz: In the novel, it’s more mysterious; the paralysis hadn’t been happening for so long and she walks more often. It’s strange: she’s just very paralyzed and then will go to the shop for some hair grips. So, I made a decision that I wanted it to be for a longer time, because then the impact on Sofia is greater. If you’re four years old, not 17, when your mother is ill, it’s very different. She almost becomes Rose’s mother in some ways.
I also wanted to root it in a real condition, partly because I didn’t want people to think this is about people faking pain, because the pain is very real, even if it’s not seen on an x-ray. The fact that it’s produced by a nervous disorder rather than a physiological disorder or a fracture doesn’t make the pain any less. We consulted with a brilliant doctor called Chris Symeon about FND, Functional Neurological Disorder, where people can’t walk. Often it’s rooted in trauma, either recent or from the past. But in the night, their legs move around, because their brain is not telling the legs to shut down.
Filmmaker: Another subject that’s current, in the States at least, is about intimacy coordinators. The use of intimacy coordinators on set has been more or less standardized in recent years, but Anora’s star Mikey Madison said that the film does not use intimacy coordinators. What is your position on this in general, and did you use intimacy coordinators in this film?
Lenkiewicz: We had Ita O’Brien, an Irish intimacy coordinator who was very much in touch with the actors about any sense of touch or anything that might be difficult. I think it’s incredibly important. The actors should feel safe on a set. I adapted She Said, which was about Harvey Weinstein, so for me, an actor’s psychological and physical safety is utmost. We were very graced in our production that it was two women [Krieps and Mackey] who trusted each other very much and admired each other. So, it was a very fluid and there was no awkwardness. It was just this wonderful exploration of their relationship. Neither of them felt either shy; they were very bold and brave and wanted to make it as real as possible, and I very much stepped back. They had some words to say, and I said “It would be great if you could travel from here to here, because you have to kiss her.” And the first kiss, I suggested a position for Vicky. Vicky led that scene, Emma reacted as Sofia would and I think it’s one of the most wonderful first kisses on the screen. It’s very sensual, and that’s another reason I wanted to direct this: I didn’t want to feel like they were being objects of desire. I just wanted to follow their desire. I think it’s very important, but ultimately, you don’t want anyone feeling awkward. You have a conversation, and that’s great.
Filmmaker: One of the things that most surprised me was is who you cast as Christos, Sofia’s estranged father. For whatever reason, I didn’t expect the father to look like that. Could you talk more about casting him?
Lenkiewicz: We shot in Greece and thought about various Greek actors. Vangelis is a legend in Greek independent cinema; if you’re in Greece and say Vangelis Mourikis is in your film, they exclaim, “Mourakis!” He’s never done television, never done studio, just independent film, and he’s a stunning actor, like Greece’s John Cassavetes. When I met him, he was very transfixing and I thought, “Yes, I can imagine a younger Rose with this young Greek who transports her.” We had a very interesting conversation and I said, “Would you like to do it?” It’s a smaller part than he would normally do. And he said, “I would like to do it if he has a key. At the moment, I don’t see his key.” That was interesting, because it sparked thinking about Rose’s past and him giving Sofia information. So, the scenes that I’d written for Christos changed somewhat.
Filmmaker: As a first-time director, what role or position on the crew did you find the most intriguing or challenging to communicate with?
Lenkiewicz: Well, I had a very interesting relationship with the script continuity [person], because I was just excited by what was going on, then this brilliant script supervisor, Katerina, would take my arm and say, “You do realize she’s put her bag on a different arm.” And I was like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Then she showed me, and I go, “Oh, it does matter.” So, that was wonderful, to have this kind of parent in a way saying, “You haven’t noticed, but something’s different. Let’s just watch the playback.” And I would see that does jar. It was so detailed in terms of the words that were spoken and how gently that was conveyed to the actors, because they’re on rocket fuel, and to come up and say, “You used the wrong hand”—Katerina would convey that gently. It’s a really delicate role.
