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Hungry Hearts Eccentric Parenting

Based on a novel by Marco Franzoso, is a 2014 Italian drama film directed by Saverio Costanzo. It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71^st Venice International Film Festival. At Venice, Adam Driver and Alba Rohrwacher won the Volpi Cup for for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively. It is also scheduled to be screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Love from Bizarre Opening in Bathroom

In the bizarro opening scene of Hungry Hearts, Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) accidentally walks into a tiny restaurant bathroom in which total stranger Jude (Adam Driver) is anxiously taking a massive, smelly dump. A malfunctioning door locks them in. He apologizes profusely as his bowels continue to unleash themselves, and she can’t decide whether to giggle or vomit. It’s a scene so disgustingly nutty that you could be forgiven for thinking you’re about to watch a scatological rom-com for the ages.

The film flashes forward from that gross-out meet-cute to a few months later. Jude and Mina, now an item, are in bed. She finds out that she’s being transferred for her job. They have a somber heart-to-heart about whether their relationship can continue. Then she discovers she’s pregnant, and the next thing we know, they’re getting married at a restaurant on Brighton Beach. We’re not sure that these two belong together, but the corporeal compels them — from his bowels in that opening scene to her pregnancy test (presented with a shot of her on the toilet bowl) and beyond.

Strange Nurturing

Mina’s refusal to eat meat or any kind of protein threatens the pregnancy. She insists on having a natural childbirth, but at her weight, it’s risky. After the baby is born, it has difficulty thriving. Mina builds a rooftop garden in their apartment building, where she grows organic produce and medicinal herbs free from the poison she fears the city is spreading. But the child’s lack of growth pushes the couple into conflict: Doctors tell Jude that he needs to feed the baby meat and store-bought products — all the spoils of modernity that his wife fears so much.

There’s something else about the film’s approach that’s captivating. One of the most fascinating things one hears about the human body is what a complicated, impressive machine it is, and yet so quiet: Our body barely ever makes a sound, even as it churns away in bewildering complexity beneath the fragile surface of our self. By foregrounding bodily processes, by keeping the fact that we’re living, breathing organisms at the center of his film, Costanzo creates something wildly discomforting and new — an existential body horror relationship drama.

A riveting, relentless film

Based on a novel by Marco Franzoso, Hungry Hearts is a riveting, relentless film. It may also be an infuriating one, and not always in a good way. The film starts off in observational mode, but it soon drifts towards Jude’s side. As he becomes more and more desperate to save his child, his wife starts to feel almost like a demon — a constant presence judging him, undercutting him, maybe even threatening him. Any couple who has had disagreements over how to take care of a child or even what they themselves should be eating can find something to relate to here, but as the film drifts more and more into the realm of a thriller, it privileges one point of view over another. That probably won’t sit well with everybody, and I imagine an equally fascinating film could be made of couples arguing over what they thought of this one.

But Hungry Hearts is too smart just to stop there. In its final scenes, it starts to complicate what it’s been telling and showing us. The stylization suggests subjectivity — and thus, potentially, unreliability. It’s a subtle shift, but one scene in particular near the very end suggests that there’s more to this world than we’ve been shown up to this point. But then, just as suddenly, the film pulls us out of that and into something else, with one final twist. Hungry Hearts is a troubled, troubling movie. The unrest it creates looms long after the end credits have rolled.

Synopsis

Jude is American, Mina is Italian. They meet by chance in New York City. A whirlwind romance ensues - they get married and she becomes pregnant. From the early months of pregnancy, a strong motherly instinct signals to Mina that she is bearing a special child. In order to respect nature, she obsessively protects him from the contamination of the outside world and struggles to preserve his total purity. Jude, for the love of Mina, follows her lead, but only up to the point when he faces a terrible truth: his son is not growing and his life is in danger. A pervasive battle of suspicions and resentments begins between Jude and Mina which, in a desperate search for a solution, leads to an emotional showdown. Adam Driver and Alba Rohrwacher both won Volpi Cup Awards for Best Actor and Actress at Venice Film Festival.