Hot Milk review: Fiona Shaw steals the show in a meandering, quiet film about repressed emotion

Emma Mackey and Fiona Shaw in Hot Milk (Image: Nikos Nikolopoulos/MUBI)

If there’s one thing Fiona Shaw can do well (though there are, of course, many things she can do well), it’s play a difficult older woman with a mysterious past.

In recent years, she has stolen the show with appearances as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s unflinching therapist in Fleabag and Jodie Comer’s bemused MI6 boss in Killing Eve. Most recently, she was a bright spot in a frustrating sophomore season of Bad Sisters, playing the trouble making Angelica who becomes a hilarious thorn in the side of Sharon Horgan’s coven.

And again, here in Hot Milk, a big screen adaptation of Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel of the same name, she provides the backbone of this strange and quiet drama. Shaw

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