New Release Review – “Hot Milk”

Following Justin Anderson’s Swimming Home, Rebecca Lenkiewicz‘s Hot Milk is the second adaptation of a Deborah Levy novel to arrive in 2025. Both movies share a Mediterranean setting, and both feature uptight English-speakers being seduced by an enigmatic and bohemian European woman. They’re both frustratingly obtuse. Neither film really nails down what it wants to say, but Hot Milk is the more engaging of the two, thanks largely to an attention-grabbing performance from Fiona Shaw.

Shaw, who is having something of a late career renaissance right now, plays Rose, a 64-year-old Irish woman who has spent the past couple of decades in a state of unexplained paralysis. Seeking a cure, Rose travels with her…