Sweet Milk Lake review: dive into this queer delight

The tender but tough debut directorial feature from Harvey Zielinski, Sweet Milk Lake – a contender for the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Bright Horizons prize for first or second features – gets at a truth both intimately specific and universal.

We’ve all been forced into playing people we’re not. There are things you say and do to fit in, to make life easier, to be included.

But it never works out. The more energy we put into creating our imagined selves, the more it drains us and those around us. Yes, the truth may occasionally hurt, but it’s the only one worth living for.

Can you ever go back?

An abundantly charismatic presence, Zielinski has carved an impressive performance career on our stages and screens. He grasps the immeasurable reward of being his true self, and the immense danger this sometimes-rotten world places upon trans bodies, pouring all of it into Sweet Milk Lake’s powerful premise.

The writer, director and producer, who’s been mentored by Rhys Graham, also stars as Jake. A lost soul, we meet him spinning out under the strobing lights of a Melbourne club. A hot guy’s trying to pick him up, but the chat-up lines swerve perilously close to objectifying Jake’s transness. Retreating to a bathroom stall, the temptation to spin a false picture in the catfish’s lair of Grindr is no escape.

Jake’s discomfort increases at family dinner the next day, where his mum (Belinda McClory) adamantly deadnames him, much to the horror of his twin brother Sam’s partner, Alice (Mia Morrisey). Sam (also Zielinski) is reasonably supportive, but piles pressure on Jake to join his real estate business.

Still navigating the P-plates of his newfound freedom, Jake decides to head back to the country town he grew up in, for better or worse. He’s hoping to reconnect with his dying dad Lee (Kieran Darcy-Smith), despite signs the older man only wants to hear from Sam.

Sam’s having none of it, with murky waters running under that burned bridge. But Jake’s head is swimming.

Fighting the truth

Arriving late at night, Jake hovers outside his dad’s, full of trepidation. His halting indecision is rudely interrupted by The Narrow Road to the Deep North actor David Howell’s glinting-eyed chaos goblin Mark. Wearing naught but his undies and runners while huffing a joint as if his life depended on it, Mark immediately mistakes Jake for his high school bestie Sam.

Jake’s dad also assumes Sam has come home at long last, after years of icy estrangement, with forgiveness in his heart. Lee doesn’t know about Jake’s truth, with the thawing that immediately occurs too easy to warm into.

With his dad staying with his best mate Ken (Nicholas Cassim), his wastrel son Mark and partner Phoebe (Ngaire Pigram), there’s no room to breathe. So Jake stays at a nearby motel. It’s here he crashes into another chaos engine of an effervescently puckish kind in the spritely form of dancer-turned-actor Hunter Page-Lochard’s Toby.

A flirtatious lush, queer gadabout, Toby is also used to standing out in a country town that’s predominantly white and straight. He’s the bane of Michael Logo’s motel manager’s gig, with regular noise complaints made about Toby’s midnight rendezvous with closeted men. When one of these guys no-shows, the sparks fly between him and Jake, sharing a bottle of red by the motel pool.

When they do eventually make it back to Jake’s room, ostensibly to check the tile grout is up to code, steam rises. But Jake isn’t ready to undress yet and comfortably fold into Toby’s abundant confidence.

All the while, Jake’s playing the part of the big man around his dad, indulging in fishing trips and cliff diving, and fighting alongside Mark, both in the video games Sam loved and street scrapping outside the pub.

Slipping between these modes at a dizzying rate, Jake struggles to stay one step ahead. Mark becomes increasingly suss about memory gaps, with Jake not privy to Sam’s history with him. Can Jake spin all these plates, clutching onto his ailing dad’s sudden affection while keeping Mark at arm’s length without alienating Toby’s gentle heart?

Watch the trailer

Magnificent performances

It’s a cracker of a set-up, worthy of the wit of Shakespeare’s mistaken identity comedies, with an ever-present hint of tragedy. Wearing masks can mean losing sight of who you truly are just to fit into a dangerous world that may not accept you. There be bears in these woods.

None of it would work if Zielinski weren’t up to the adroit code-shifting, physically, in voice and gaze in a heartbeat, as the trio of Jake, Sam and Sam-ish. It’s a remarkable performance that’s equally matched by Zielinski’s assured direction and intelligent writing, capturing how Jake gains confidence in Sam’s shoes, all while tiptoeing around the inherent risk of these men’s conditional love and the threat of violent rejection.

A one-shot scene at a barbeque will have you holding your breath, hoping Sweet Milk Lake doesn’t take a turn for Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk About Kevin when archery practice comes into play.

Howell is a magnificent scene-stealer, a comic relief jester with a darker edge, mercurially unpredictable. Darcy-Smith is well cast in the role of a previously gruff man suddenly softening, aware of the damage he’s wrought, as mortality’s gift rapidly runs out. There’s a complicated kink in their family history, too.

The camera adores Reckless star Page-Lochard and his chemistry with Zielinski is smokin’. There are shades of Beautiful Thing in their shared working-class roots and in of Weekend, in the whirlwind promise of what could be, as well as the aching of Goran Stolevski’s Of An Age.

Tenderly lensed by cinematographer Michael Lincoln, with an eye for stolen glances, and set to an emotionally soaring score by composer Chiara Costanza, peppered with knowing needle drops, Sweet Milk Lake makes for a gorgeous addition to the wealth of Australia’s queer storytelling, all the more impressive for it being a debut feature predominantly shot in regional Victoria.

Wherever Zielinski wanders next, we’ll be waiting like a ute idling outside the promise of acceptance. Sweet Milk Lake is a timely reminder to hold onto you, no matter what, because the cost of transforming for someone else is never worth it.

Sweet Milk screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival and will release nationally later in the year. Harvey Zielinski will also appear at the MIFF Talks event Consuming Culture on 15 August.

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