Film Review: Hungry Hearts, starring Alba Rohrwacher and Adam Driver
Combining an Italian director and screenwriter (Saverio Costanzo) , a New York location, an award-winning Italian actress (Alba Rohrwacher) and an American rising star (Girls star Adam Driver), Hungry Hearts makes for an eerily engaging emotional thriller, and one of my favorites at the 2015 Venice Film Festival.
A chance meeting in the bathroom of a New York City Chinese restaurant brings Jude, a young American engineer and Mina, an Italian girl working for the embassy together and a pregnancy seals the deal. But the romantic idea of throwing caution to the wind and marrying someone you know too little about is a bad one for Jude.
There were early signs of Mina’s mental unbalance; her unwillingness to eat during her pregnancy was clearly something beyond ordinary morning sickness. But starving herself is one thing; starving the baby is another. As Mina’s phobias and idiosyncrasies grow stronger, Jude withdraws from the world in an attempt to focus on his child and protect him; but from what? Is Mina really trying to kill her child?
Hungry Hearts cleverly combines provocative topics like Indigo Children, veganism for babies and the use of untraditional medicine and makes them seem sinister, and while the film has no anti-crunchy Mom bias, a crunchy-mom is Hungry Hearts’ menacing factor.
Alba Rohrwacher was the perfect choice in the role of Mina, the mother with the monster-sized love for her child; fragile, terrifying, timid, and yet controlling, all at once. I don’t know; she scared me.
Rohrwacher and Driver won Best Actress and Best Actor for their Hungry Hearts performances.
Based on the book, Il Bambino Indaco, by Marco Franzoso
I Love Italian Everything 