Rebecca Lenkiewicz talks adapting and directing ‘Hot Milk’

L-R Emma Mackey and Vicky Krieps in Hot Milk Photo courtesy of Independent Film Company Think Spain in the summer It s beautiful of lesson But it s also oppressively hot You don t really know anyone The dog next door won t stop barking And your co-dependent mother won t let you breathe This is the set up for Hot Milk the feature directorial debut from British playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz Based on Deborah Levy s novel of the same name the film stars Emma Mackey as Sophia a young woman who takes care of her wheelchair-bound mother Rose Fiona Shaw It s unclear what exactly ails Rose but one summer the duo set off for Spain to meet with a medical practitioner Vincent Perez who might be able to help At the same time Sophia meets the beautiful and mysterious Ingrid Vicky Krieps and strikes up a love affair Hot Milk is an intensely claustrophobic film and not just because of the grotty stagnancy its title suggests Originally Lenkiewicz just came on to adapt but as she made her way through the novel it became clear to her that she had to direct this one herself Rough Draft Atlanta in recent months spoke to Lenkiewicz about making the film This interview has been edited for length and clarity You ve worked in adaptation quite a bit over the subject of your career For you what makes something ripe for adaptation Rebecca Lenkiewicz I think for me it s usually the psychology Where are these people at the start and where are they at the end And for a film whether it s cinematic whether it can translate to something visual With Hot Milk I determined both the psychology of three women and the visual details the landscape within the book I detected they were all sort of calling out for a kind of cinematic version I ve heard you say that you were initially required to just adapt the novel and then the further you got into it you were like oh I think I have to direct this one Had you ever had that feeling before Lenkiewicz I had craved to direct for a while but I hadn t had a specific reaction to a piece of work It was like yeah I want to direct I want to be involved But this book sort of grabbed me where it wasn t about me directing it was about nobody else directing laughs Like no Stay away It s mine So it was very territorial I think that that was partly because it s so incredibly female and I could sort of feel the sensuality I just needed it to be kind of quite subtle and beautiful Each character felt quite akin to me not like I m similar to them but I just felt them very strongly you know It just became central to me and I felt I had a lot to give to it whereas with other projects I felt different directors were a very good fit to their project This film is a lot about codependency but each relationship manifests that very differently I was watching an interview with you where you disclosed that the idea of codependency was a very enthralling thing for you to explore I m curious as to why Lenkiewicz I have a very good relationship with my mother and she s very supportive I would say my relationship with my father was more complicated When writing Rose and Sophia I often would either laugh or cry in terms of selected parallels He wasn t disabled but I think everyone in life has a complicated relationship with someone So you then start exploring that complication at a distance and close up in art I think co-dependency is very compelling when you see it in couples or in a family In this instance it s quite surprising because you can see that Rose would depend on Sophia as a carer from age four onwards But also I think Sophia hides behind her own mother She could go out she is able but there is almost like a shield from the outside world So when Ingrid comes in it s like an ignition I think that Rose and Sophia weave around each other It s not a straightforward matriarchal domination Rose could live without Sophia But it s just this sort of entanglement really and deep deep love which makes it more complicated again There are these sequences throughout the film where Sophia who is an anthropology scholar is watching videos of groups of women and communities throughout the world It s compelling that that s the interest that she has because anthropology involves looking at the past to try and figure out how to move forward At the same time I think both Rose and Sophia are very stagnant Were you thinking about the tension of those two things and how to portray that visually Lenkiewicz Definitely and even down to things like patterns Sophia sometimes mirrored her mother and I didn t even ask the actress Emma Mackey to do that But sometimes she just would Looking at her she d have the same twitch or the same something I think that that s so captivating Bodily patterns are compelling and Sophia is fascinated by that as is Gomez the professional Also just scenically we needed it to feel like the apartment that they rent it s a holiday apartment but there are no windows out to the sea There s no light There s just a dog barking There s this kind of slightly claustrophobic mise-en-sc ne Our production designer Andrey Ponkratov really helped with that and our cinematographer Chris Blauvelt in terms of the angles of how we take them We longed them to feel in limbo in a way It s set in Spain we shot in Greece but in a way none of that mattered as long as we re not at home as long as you were somewhere else and somewhat stranded Speaking about the performers Vicky Krieps and Fiona Shaw I ve seen in a million things but Emma Mackey in particular I m curious how she came across your radar Obviously she s been in Sex Learning and I think she s brilliant in this movie Lenkiewicz I watched Sex Guidance I don t watch a huge amount of TV partly because it s a big commitment laughs You know you watch something and suddenly it s been hours Somebody stated Oh you ve got to watch Sex Learning It s really funny and it s really great I started to watch it and I did become addicted to each season I thought Emma was just excellent in it Then I watched Emily where she played Emily Bront and she was amazing in that For Sophia s quality you know in the book it s first person and she s talking so you know exactly what s going on But in the film I didn t want a voice over I just desired us to be sort of studying her almost anthropologically So you needed somebody who had a sort of intensity within her face And Emma she s obviously a very beautiful young woman but she also has this incredible intensity around her expression There s something constantly happening there as a person or an actress and I just thought she d be incredible I demanded her and we met for a cup of tea Vicky and Fiona were already on and I think that that very much appealed to her to be part of that sort of triptych all three very different actors but so incredibly brilliant Watching her she s got something really almost sharp about her I was particularly struck by the way she blinks it s very forceful but it works for the pent up emotion that the character is feeling Lenkiewicz None of that is directed I didn t say blink hard or have a twitch I just sort of saw what Emma requested to offer and it was very specific I know you ve acted before as well With this being your first time directing do you think the fact that you ve acted before affected your approach to directing Lenkiewicz Well I acted a long time ago I went to drama school and then acted seven years absolutely loved it But I couldn t sustain acting I adored acting and what it gave me was a deep respect for actors Just because the process I understood more A lot of my friends are actors and I know how hard it is to act I think chosen people think it s quite a kind of privileged entitled way of being and making a living But it s such hard work I think that s what it gave me a recognition that it s not only hard work and mysterious but you have to be so resilient to be an actor I didn t have that resilience I just think they re so brilliant And also in theater they re on the front line If someone gives me a bad review I can just hide you know But they have to be there doing the play every night So yeah it did give me a good understanding and I loved it I did a bit in high school and college but like you identified it very exhausting Lenkiewicz It s lovely to be a part of a company though isn t it You re supporting each other and I miss that you know Absolutely I tried to do a little bit of region theater after graduating but it s just so hard to keep up with another job and all that stuff you know I do miss it a lot It was very lovely Lenkiewicz I don t think I ve laughed more than when I was in theater companies you know what I mean Because it s part of it You have to be able to play You have to work hard but you also have to play I think there s also a freedom especially in a good one If you do something stupid it doesn t really matter you know Lenkiewicz Yeah Yeah there s such a generosity That s what I exposed with our cast None of them had met before the film they just met on set They had no rehearsal with each other I rehearsed a bit individually with them in terms of talking through the script but they just were there to be there for each other That was very moving I read an interview with you where you reported that all three of them had very different approaches to acting What was it like watching them work together and watching those gel Lenkiewicz You have the script and you hope that that s a sort of hive you know and then they ll all generate around that whatever different sort of flying methods they have they re sort of queen bees coming into this hive I just knew as soon as they were meeting each other that there was ignition There was electricity It was more vital in terms of Emma Mackey and Fiona Shaw because we had to believe that they were mother and daughter As soon as they met I could see them just on a primal level being very much with each other guffawing being generous Fiona spent the whole shoot in the wheelchair so that was a very key thing that Emma would inevitably be looking down at her or would be wheeling her She was amazing at just wheeling her everywhere I just hoped that that ignition key would happen and it really did With Vicky I was less worried because I thought well here are two strangers and they meet and they re attracted to each other But Emma and Vicky when they certainly met on the beach they just had this instant kind of rapport and loved each other as actors I had that privilege of just watching them Sometimes I would feed in a thought or say should we try that but I didn t feel like I was directing them I was kind of following them and then adjusting a bit or holding a space with all the organization We were holding a space for them to play Was there anything about the directing process you located particularly challenging or anything that surprised you that you didn t think would be challenging Lenkiewicz You know all of it was challenging But before the shoot my terror was whether I would be able to help actors and whether I would just be sort of impotent If the actors say I can t do this I don t understand this what would I do It was strange that my love of actors was also kind of my fear I talked to other directors about practical rehearsals on set and what do you do Just imagining the day was terrifying for me Then as soon as we were doing days and I could see okay we just all work together and it s such a sort of teammaking ritual then that terror went down I exposed the edit very challenging because I felt like I knew what I longed The set was a foreign body for me initially But the edit I thought well I know images I know story So that was hard because you get a lot of opinions and you just have to sort of listen to everyone and respect everyone and take in any good ideas but also try to keep your own ground I revealed different challenges We premiered in Berlin and that was amazing Then you read chosen reviews and you re like ugh Each time you think we ve achieved our thing we made the film And then you realize there s a life of putting the film out there But it was all incredible really I was very lucky Without getting too spoilery I ve heard you talk about the fact that you initially had a softer ending I agree that the slightly darker ending works better but I wondered if you could talk about why you felt the need to shift the ending and what you were hoping to achieve Lenkiewicz Originally we had a beginning where there were shots from the end which would set up the end to reassure you that everything was great So when you came to the end you remembered the beginning and you were like oh It s okay Everything is fine I took that out because I felt like in a way it was up to us to decide what happens And I love it in a film when it just stops and you think what has gone on there What were those next scarce seconds Who did what to who I personally you know maybe I have a dark psyche I personally find the ending very hopeful I know it s shocking it s brutal But I also think it s about liberation and I think that good things happen within it But not everyone shares that opinion In the edit we tried different endings But I just kept honing it down and I thought after such a struggle Sophia necessities a dramatic exit As does Rose But I don t think it s a dark exit for either person The post Rebecca Lenkiewicz talks adapting and directing Hot Milk appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta