“Refreshing, scary, frustrating.”
To love is easy but to live with it is not. In Saverio Constanzo’s Hungry Hearts, we will witness
how a young love, which unfolded quite happily, becomes scarred with modern
living and ended in a haunting and frustrating note.
The movie’s introduction, shot continuously for roughly six
minutes, is comic and mesmerizing as two people become trapped inside a small
bathroom in a Chinese restaurant. Italian girl Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) and New
Yorker Jude (Adam Driver) instantly hit off despite his diarrheal attack which
scented the blossoming of their romance. Few takes forward and the couple are now
dancing to the tune of “Flashdance…. What a Feeling” and banging on a kitchen
counter.
However, their marriage life together is tested when Mina
insists on New Age living – freedom from radiation, dirt, impurities and
contaminations. She even has her childbirth performed in a little swimming
pool. To make matters worse, Mina feeds the baby with vegan food, resulting to
its failure to grow. She becomes even more disturbed, coercing Jude and his
sharp-tongue mother Anne (Roberta Maxwell) to join forces and separate the
child away from Mina. However, their action backfires and the film ends in a
shocking yet disappointing conclusion.
Hungry Hearts successfully
crosses several genres – comedy, romance, drama, horror and thriller. There is
a fluid and graceful transition between genres that only a seasoned director
like Saverio Constanzo can do. Constanzo has amazing control of emotions and
pacing. There is no excessiveness that would make us roll out eyes in disbelief. There
is just perfect timing and balance among elements. That unexpected gunshot towards the end
is the most horrific moment. Anyone’s heart would skip a beat, wondering who
would spill blood after that.
The movie is also wonderfully written that Mina’s transformation
is subtle and unnoticeable. It strikes as natural and ordinary that we could only
empathize with her. She is never portrayed as cruel or evil; she is just naïve and
afraid that she sees the modern world as threatening. Thanks partly to
Rohrwacher for bringing the different shades of Mina. She is brilliant from
beginning to end as she transformed from a quirky and lovely lady to a troubled
and frustrated mother. Driver keeps up with her as the loving and tolerant husband.
Yet, he shows dimensions as he adjusts to his wife’s changes. And Maxwell is
simply perfect as the overprotective mother and the fanatical in-law.
However, the film’s ending is somewhat mismanaged and unwise
which most would find unsatisfactory. Instead of dealing intelligently with
Mina’s illness, the movie opts for a safer yet more intriguing conclusion – safer
because killing Mina is an easier way to put the story to rest, and intriguing because
it leaves us dazed, breathless and stupefied. It would have been more moving,
inspiring and positively stirring if the movie turned the other way around.
Still, Hungry Hearts is a great film to watch. It is fresh and unique and unquestionably
captivating all throughout.
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