And you thought YOUR mother was scary.
Hungry Hearts: Opening in US theaters and VOD June 5th.
An Italian novel, (Il Bambino Indaco, writtten by Marco Franzoso) inspired an Italian director and screenwriter (Saverio Costanzo) to make an English language film in a New York location, enlisting top Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher and American rising star Adam Driver and the result: an eerily engaging emotional thriller about an emotionally unbalanced mother, one of my favorites at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
Mina, played by Rohrwacher, is an Italian working for the embassy in New York who meets young American engineer Jude (Driver) and falls in love. Pregnancy hurries along the relationship and they marry, but this film should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone planning a wedding before finding out as much as they can about the person they are marrying.
There were early signs of Mina’s mental instability; 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. “Crunchy” moms can be annoying, for sure, but this one is downright spooky, and Hungry Hearts will confirm every meat eater’s suspicion that vegans are evil food haters. 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 their child?
Marco Franzoso told me that in the book, he wanted her to remain a mystery for the reader and for the other characters in the book, never clearly describing her physically and keeping her origins fuzzy, so we’re free to create any mental image that suits us. In the movie, Rohrwacher truly delivers, bringing to life the mother with the monster-sized love for her child, fragile, terrifying, timid, and yet controlling, all at once.
This I know: she scared me.
Hungry Hearts cleverly combines provocative current topics like Indigo Children, veganism for babies and the use of untraditional medicine and makes them seem sinister here, but obsession is the villain and it is a pervasive threat for everyone involved.
COMING SOON: MY INTERVIEW WITH MARCO FRANZOSO
I Love Italian Everything 