Focusing on parenting paranoia
Hungry Hearts (out of 4) Starring Adam Driver, Alba Rohrwacher and Roberta Maxwell. Directed by Saverio Costanzo. 113 minutes. Opening Friday at the Carlton. 14A As the vocal anti-vaccine movement grabs headlines comes timely thriller Hungry Hearts, about a new mother whose whispered obsessions about her child’s health become dangerously overwhelming.
Fragile-looking Mina (Italian Alba Rohrwacher of The Wonders) is anything but strident, yet she is able to impose her bizarre rules. She relentlessly pushes the child’s increasingly anxious father (Adam Driver) aside with compelling performances from both that won them top acting prizes at the 2014 Venice Film Festival.
It wasn’t always like this. Mina and Jude first cross paths in a tiny New York bathroom in one of the best meet-cute encounters in memory in this first English-language feature from Italian director Saverio Costanzo. Their romance leads to a pregnancy and a dreamily shot wedding reception where Jude’s mother (Roberta Maxwell) promises support to Mina, even if her son often keeps her at arm’s length.
Mina and Jude are understandably nervous about parenthood, so when Mina gets a $10 storefront psychic reading that she’s carrying an “indigo child,” which seems to herald some sort of specialness, Jude plays along.
Mina, who never seems to eat, starts to believe menacing dreams are prescient. She imposes rules, cribbing together half-baked philosophies and quack science about health and well being, even as her doctor cautions her about carrying an underweight child. In labour prematurely, she’s furious that she’s forced into a caesarean by a troubled delivery, quietly insisting, “I know what’s dangerous.”
At home, she keeps her son, who is strangely never named, close. Mina insists on a vegan diet for her child who, at age 7 months, has never been outdoors. Visitors are rebuffed. When Jude comes home, Mina frets at what he brings in from “outside.”
Costanzo similarly keeps his cam- era close to his subjects in the claustrophobic apartment, increasing the tension as Jude struggles to keep his voice even while panic rises. He knows the baby is not thriving and unwell, sneaking him out of the house to see a doctor who confirms his fears. The baby needs protein, preferably meat, which horrifies Mina who remains passive even as she stonewalls Jude. He never feeds the baby without looking over his shoulder. Even when he finds out Mina is giving the child an oil that strips the nutrition from his food, he tries to reason with her.
But his lack of resolve — and a sudden, jarring use of a fish-eye lens that disappears just as quickly — becomes ridiculous. It takes Jude far too long to finally admit what Mina is doing to their child as Hungry Hearts heads toward a contrived conclusion.