Milk (Melk), the debut film by Dutch director Stefanie Kolk, follows a woman who, after losing her child, continues to produce milk that she no longer has anyone to give. Robin struggles with the trauma in silence, without superfluous words and gestures. Her defense mechanisms in the fight against loss are falling into deeper and deeper absurdity. We can ask ourselves: where does one draw the line with reason?

Get it out of yourself is a well-known saying when dealing with trauma, which, as in the case of Robin, by pumping milk becomes literal. Nevertheless, the frantic storage of it becomes a buildup of sadness, from which, with a therapeutic support group, one escapes into the forest, into silence. The amount of milk becomes equivalent to the amount of unused and insurmountable maternal love. The liquid becomes a symbol of the unborn child, and its indefinite preservation delays the confrontation with loss – Robin cannot let it go, just as she does not let go of her illusion of possible parenthood. As the fridge gets fuller, the cracking point in the characters gets closer. Internal unrest is accentuated by silence, long shots, established rhythm, lighting and sound atmospheres. Silence, as a transfer of the unspoken, becomes a separate means of expression by which the director builds tension, making the spaces between words filled with raw, unfiltered emotions. In its rhythm and silence, the film opens up a space for introspective discomfort — feelings within it, like milk in a refrigerator, accumulating to the point of oversaturation.

Milk, as a leitmotif, is already present at the first shots, at the same time at the last moments when everything seems to be fine, while the trauma has not yet been clearly defined. Its whiteness, in its innocence and sterility, is both a consolation and a reminder, a tangible link between what is and what could have been. The never uttered but ever-present grief over a stillborn child becomes the center of the action, along with the non-verbalized but obvious love and support between the young couple, faced with a difficult fate.

Emotional layeredness is achieved by the masterful acting of Frieda Barnhard, who uses extremely subtle facial expressions, slow movements and glances to depict the inner world of the woman whose role she interprets. She does not grieve in the usual, expected way; her pain does not flow in tears, but remains trapped in the body, in the physical reflex of milk production that will never be used as nature dictates. Through prolonged silence and waiting, a feeling of sadness and powerlessness is built that can affect viewers almost physically. Where emotions are unspoken but ubiquitous, milk becomes a subtle storytelling device.

The visual identity remains consistent with the subtlety of the story. The colors are cold and neutral, the light is mild, and the composition of the shots is almost always focused on the protagonist, who, both physically and metaphorically, remains trapped in the space of her own suffering. The director uses static, minimalist camera movements and editing rhythm to convey a sense of stagnation and inability to move.

When the sounds of the milk pump in her ears become the heartbeat of her child's extinguished heart, Robin will realize silence is no longer a cure. Defense mechanisms that involve silence and delay become absurd, essentially unbearable. Her embrace of the full milk fridge symbolises her final farewell to the child, while the final handover of milk to another woman becomes an act of liberation, the last step towards overcoming and awakening the trauma, which requires deflection in order to disappear over time. With this scene, Stefanie Kolk showed how fine the line is between sadness and insanity, between love and obsession, between rejection and acceptance. Sometimes it is not necessary to say a word in order for what is boiling inside us to come out. Milk is not a film that offers relief. Milk is an unreserved reminder of the human ability to escape, while it suggests with an open end that the solution is not in letting out suffering, but in allowing ourselves to feel it. Only when we give ourselves permission to feel can we allow ourselves to move on. Without going into the well-known mantra – if you love him, let him go.