Milkwater: A Realistic Look into the Complicated Friendships of New York
Written by BFF 2020 Ambassador, Nace DeSanders
Written and directed by Morgan Ingari, Milkwater is about a young New Yorker, Milo (Molly Bernard), who becomes a surrogate mother for a new friend, Roger (Patrick Breen). The film also stars Robin DeJesus and Ava Eisenson as Milo’s closest friends. Milkwater opens up with a baby shower scene reminiscent of the opening baby shower scene from Like a Boss. It’s comedic, up tempo and immediately tells us what kind of lady our protagonist is. It sets the tone and let’s us know, we are in for a fun ride. Milkwater delivers.
The story is surprisingly real and believable. The film does not divulge into unfunny shticks or ongoing gags that don’t hit. It’s a character-driven story first and a comedy second. The way that the characters banter with each other is quick and witty. I think, in a lot of films, this starts to sound like people reading from a script. Being constantly quick and witty becomes annoying but Milkwater avoids that by not letting every joke hit. At one point, Milo jokes about fighting people off to protect someone’s bag. The joke misses. He says “What?,” confused not amused. As an endlessly witty moron myself, I know that reaction too well. It’s believable, thanks to believably written characters. That being said, let’s jump into the characters.
Our protagonist, Milo, similar to Kiera Knightly’s character in Laggies, watches her peers hit the traditional milestones of adulthood and feels as though she is doing it wrong (it being life). I would say that Milo’s character is an archetype of female comedies. She is the woman-child like Frances Ha, Annie from Bridesmaids, or even Abbi and Ilana from Broad City. Milo is a funny, likeable protagonist but her flaws are what make her come to life. You love her but absolutely understand the other characters’ gripes with her. You also definitely know someone like her. That familiarity you immediately have with her makes her easy to follow through the story.
A main staple of the woman-child archetype is her relationship with her friends. Milo meets Roger in a very rare and adorable friendship meet-cute. Friendship meet-cutes happen way more often than romantic meet-cutes, right? Why do I only see the romantic ones? Milkwater is a portrait of friendships between Milo and a number of others. It only makes sense that we start with a platonic meet-cute. I thought Milo’s relationship with her pregnant best friend, Noor, was very realistic. They weren’t perfect friends who had a fight over the course of the movie. They were close friends with issues seeded in their relationship for a long time, a side of female friendships not seen often. We see the complicated nature of their friendship when Noor reacts badly to Milo’s news of surrogacy. Milo storms out of her apartment but stops, turns around, and sees that Noor had gone after her. The women slap each other’s faces lightly and smile. The issues that arose in the argument were not ameliorated but they forgive one another because they love each other.
Milkwater highlights the New York LGBTQ plus scene in a way that traditionally films have a hard time doing. There are plenty of gay characters and many scenes take place in a drag bar but the films does not focus on the character’s queerness. It is as much a part of their character as their fun senses of humor, their life plans or their relationships to Milo. Films about queerness are fine but the reality is that LGBTQ people do not walk around existing exclusively as LGBTQ people. Queer characters whose entire existence is being queer might be considered a stereotype at this point. So having a film that focuses on an LGBTQ experience, surrogacy, while still getting to be about life. I also like that our straight protagonist hangs out with mostly LGBTQ people. This film does not have the token gay friend or the token ethnic friend. When we let queer filmmakers tell their own stories, we get real stories!
The film is very clearly and obviously, set in Brooklyn. It’s full of brooklyn-based actors, throws in jokes about the L-train and a number of jokes about what New Yokers must do (like seeing a drag show). The setting very much plays a big role in the film. It doesn’t add to the story, but it does add to the atmosphere and worldbuilding. Showing at Brooklyn-based film festivals, like the Bushwick Film Festival, locals will get an extra kick out of recognizing locations and references.
The film was well-paced with an understandable timeline. The conflict evoked a sense of poignancy. This, for me, came from the familiarity of Milo. I felt like I knew her, sometimes I was her and so her failures and difficulties were mine too. Milkwater is absolutely a success. It accomplishes everything it sets out to achieve. I absolutely recommend Milkwater to every 20 something year old who is watching all their friends and kids they knew in high school get married and have babies. It’s a specific demographic but I know there are a lot of us!