Hungry Hearts

Hungry Hearts

Hungry Hearts

Great acting, but for me it was difficult and painful to watch. The plot, combined with the way it was filmed, these weird angels, it was a bit too much.

Hungry Hearts, is the story of Judd and Mina, a young couple who met by accident, got into a relationship and eventually got married and had a child. Mina, the mother of the child, while pregnant gets convinced that her child is an "indigo", a child with special abilities, who was brought to this world, to save it. She also becomes obsessed with the baby's cleanness and purity, and avoids taking the baby out, feeding him properly, and doesn't let anyone touch him, if he/she was just outside. Judd, the father of the child, grown more and more worried about the child's health, due to Mina's obsession, and he starts acting on it. He takes the kid to a modern doctor (against Mina's wishes), he starts feeding him in secret and takes him out on strolls. The different stances on the baby's growth, brings tension between the couple, who start acting against each other, in order to gain the control on the kid's upbringing. The story is really interesting. It brings forward the absurdity of the antivax, antimed movement that has gained in popularity the last years. I would have preferred to see more of each sides pros and cons, about why they chose to raise their child the way each of them wanted. Both protagonists were really good. Alba Rohrwacher as the obsessed mother, who wants to keep her child as pure as possible, even if that endangers her child's health. Adam Driver as the concerned father, who battles between being a supportive husband and responsible parent. What was a shame in this movie, was the direction. It is quite bad. The whole movie felt like it was a first year direction student's semester project. Also it included a few shots that made the movie feel like a horror movie, when it wasn't. I am not sure if that was intentional, since a mother who oversees her child's health to keep it pure does sound like a horror story, but it just didn't work. There was lots of potential, which was wasted unfortunately. I gave a 7/10 (even though I wanted lower) only because the acting was very good, and I also follow the whole absurd movement of people who turn their backs on medicine, and it was quite nice to see a movie about it.

Hungry Hearts is a phrase play on words. It is a potent combination of words. The film showcases the blurred sense of what is conceived as normal in modern society. Normal as in interpersonal relationships, honesty, frankness, the depth of knowing one another, as well as in self awareness. The personal freedom, freedom of choices, what is considered to be an informed choice. How long can a partner respect the choices of the loved one? What is love and at what point does it start to turn into crippling obsession or mental illness. When the heart is hungry it clouds the senses. "Its a phase mum, it will pass." If you are in it you can't see the full spectrum of it. A spectator can. A wise grandmother whose heart is not hungry anymore, can feel the real responsibility of bringing up a child of a selfless point of you. It is not about you or your partner, it is about that new person that has been brought into this world hungry!

I'll admit, I was only interested in seeing this initally because I'm a huge Adam Driver fan. I knew nothing about the plot going in but found myself hooked on what I found to be a really stunning film. At times the film almost feels like theatre, with some scenes being filmed in such a way that you feel like you're in the room with them. In a way it makes Jude and Mina's relationship feel all the more real; from their unlikely romantic start right through it's eventual unravelling. There are times in the film where Mina's presence almost evokes a sense of horror in the film, carefully crafted by the film's score. Hungry Hearts perhaps finds its best quality in it's tonal shift from beginning to end, as well as the outstanding performances by both Adam and Alba, who give such an honesty to the characters that it's hard to feel as if you don't know them personally. I think the film does a great deal to question the moral stance of the viewer: each of the main characters makes decisions throughout the film that are questionable at best, but when put into context are almost justified by their personal idea of what is best for the baby. Almost. Coming out of the film, it's hard not to imagine what might have happened if Mina's mental illness had been treated, and how that might have affected the films trajectory. Either way, I know Hungry Hearts will sit with me for a while.

Adam Driver's performance and the most satisfying slap in cinematic history are the only good things about this movie. The rest of it is on par with a film school project. Grade-school level use of symbolism and foreshadowing (she dreams about a deer getting shot and then--surprise--ends up getting killed by a lady using a deer-hunting rifle!), no chemistry between the two leads (like we're supposed to believe he loved this lady with no personality too much to let her go back to her home country so he got her pregnant to keep her?), and unbelievable situations (he didn't take serious steps to stop the abuse until long after he figured it out). The female lead showed signs of being mentally unstable and robotic even before she had the baby, so he didn't see any of it? This is a serious question: was I supposed to hate Mina or have sympathy for her? Because I hated her. If this is what the director intended, then bravo, great job by the actress. If, however, if I was supposed to feel sorry for her, they failed and I was glad she died at the end. Plus the ending was a stupid cop-out; was that supposed to be a surprise ending? Because it was insultingly lame...I can hear them planning it out now: "Hey--and hear me out--let's just have Grandma shoot her! That'll tie up all the loose ends!" If you're an Adam Driver fan, sure, watch it so you can appreciate his vulnerable performance. If you're looking for a movie to watch, find another one.

The subject line is the exact opposite of the last movie review I wrote here, and I hadn't even seen this awful movie. As I've gotten older I've come to like the expression, "if you can't say something good, don't say anything," but this movie is so bad I've got to add my review to the few negative ones here. The beginning of the movie is in fact one of the better scenes, and it's stupid, and implausible for numerous reasons. Don't tell me two bathroom doors are going to suddenly become inoperable, it's just not believable. The movie goes downhill from there. The couple who meet in the weird bathroom scene get married and have a child, and I could already see problems with the script, but you never know. In fact, from the point they have the child the movie becomes an unmitigated disaster. She is very mentally ill and has "New Age" ideas about how to raise the child. I am not saying that the two are related, though maybe to the writer they are in some way. Whatever, her ideas are not working, and the child is not developing properly, and it's more than just that it's too small. The husband (Adam Driver performs quite well in his role, somehow) finally has enough of it and has to sneak the baby out to a doctor, who tells him the baby is in trouble. The mother is not only very mentally ill, but also quite stubborn: it's going to be her way, and only her way. Sometimes when told the truth about the baby or given advice she simply acts like a deaf mute and says nothing. Other times she repeats the same mantras she believes, like some kind of robot. Her face constantly show misery and she's always sullen. When the husband talks to her with kindness and obvious affection, she is often rude and picks fights. I am not an expert on these things, but to me it was obvious that the actress didn't like her character. Maybe a more skilled actress could have done more with the material, and (I may be way off) such an actress might have made suggestions about improving a badly written character. Driver's character grows in his fatherhood; the female lead never changes in any way, and it really affects the (entertainment) value of the movie. I've rarely seen a movie, even a bad movie, where the camera work wasn't correct. Whoever did the camera work in this movie acted like a student, trying out different things just to see how they would turn out, and whoever did the edit retained some awful cinematography, or whatever the word is. There were many close-ups that were unnecessary (no, they had nothing to do with "intimacy"), and worse other scenes with weird camera angles and distortions that just added to the displeasure of watching such a bad movie.

It's hard to imagine what goes through people's heads dealing with mental illness but this dives head first into the empty pool & it's very realistic and nerve racking

"Hungry Hearts" starts out strongly. The opening few minutes is set in a bathroom in the basement of a Chinese restaurant. Mina and Jude (total strangers at the time) somehow get trapped in there together when the door gets jammed - just as he's rendered the bathroom - well - let's just say it didn't smell very fresh. It was actually a fun and humorous way to introduce the two protagonists of the movie. But it should be noted that the opening scene really is the only fun and humorous scene of an otherwise very heavy and even at times depressing movie. Which isn't to say that it wasn't good, but the opening few minutes doesn't really set us up for the rest of the film, at least in terms of its tone. It's also not really what I would call a thriller, even though it's billed as a thriller. A psychological drama - tense at times, perhaps - but it really doesn't have all that many thrills. After the opening scene the movie settles down for a little while, basically showing us rather quickly the evolution of Mina and Jude's relationship. They sleep together, they fall in love, she gets pregnant, they get married, they have a baby boy. All that happens in rather quick succession, and it's after the birth of the baby that the movie develops its more tense atmosphere. Basically, Mina and Jude disagree about how to raise a child. It seems to start when Mina is told by some sort of psychic that her child is "special - an "indigo baby" (some sort of silly new age idea that I had never heard of until I watched this.) Mina treats the baby strangely. She weans him very early, won't feed him any meat or protein, won't take him outside into the sunlight. It's all rather bizarre. Jude finally gets worried because the baby isn't growing. A doctor tells him the baby is undernourished, etc., etc. The two find themselves at odds over how to raise the child - which isn't all that unusual. Different parents have different parenting styles - but usually it's a conflict between the parents, with no real harm done to the child. But in this case, Mina is hurting the child. And she's doing damage to herself. She's a vegan, but more than that I thought there were suggestions that she had an eating disorder. There were references to her wasting away, and director Saverio Costanzo used some very effective camera angles that accentuated how thin she was, which suggested that she was mentally ill. Because this is billed as a thriller, you keep expecting that angle to become front and centre, but it really doesn't. There's some scenes where the suspense is built especially through the use of music - and you expect something to happen, but then it dissipates - until the end, when something shocking does indeed happen. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I did think it was pretty good. Alba Rohrwacher was the actress who played Mina - and she was very good in the role; completely believable. Her accent at times made it hard to capture some of the dialogue completely, but she did a fine job, and - to me - her performance was the highlight of the movie. Adam Driver as Jude was probably more central to the story. Jude was torn between his love for Mina and his concern for his child. Driver didn't take anything away from the movie, but I didn't think he nailed his part as well as Rohrwacher did hers. If you're expecting a classic type of thriller, this will probably disappoint you. But it's not a bad movie. It's well acted and it raises some valid issues about different parenting styles - albeit taken to an extreme. (7/10)