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Becoming a parent is an exciting, joyful, and absolutely terrifying experience. Suddenly, your world revolves around a helpless little baby who didn’t come with an instruction manual. It wears you out during the day and keeps you up at night, and that can put anyone on edge. Fortunately, though, the experience typically isn’t nearly as disturbing as it is for the new parents in Hungry Hearts.
This eerie drama stars Adam Driver as Jude, a New York City engineer who meets Italian embassy worker Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) in the strangest, most awkward way imaginable. Still, they find a connection—and when Mina finds out that she’s being transferred, she decides to stay and start a family with Jude instead. After their son is born, though, the newlyweds quickly discover that parenting is difficult. And as Mina becomes more and more obsessive about the baby’s care and feeding, Jude begins to fear for his son’s life.
If you haven’t had children yet, it’s best to steer clear of Hungry Hearts—because it shows the experience in the worst possible light.
In the beginning of the film, Jude and Mina seem to be a perfectly normal, perfectly happy couple—or at least that’s what the quick, choppy introductory scenes suggest. The characters aren’t developed very well—nor is their relationship—which makes it difficult to settle into their story. But they seem happy enough—in their own strange way—until it all goes horribly wrong.
As they begin their transition to parenthood, something in Mina seems to snap—and as she becomes more obsessive and more controlling, Jude finds himself in a difficult position, forced to go behind his wife’s back in an attempt to keep his son healthy. What follows, then, is a dark and unsettling drama about the battle for control of their son. Both believe that they know what’s best for him, and both resort to deception and sabotage to see that he’s cared for in what they feel is the right way. The tension between the two is heavy, and the situation is made all the more horrifying by the fact that there’s a tiny, helpless (and, for some reason, nameless) child caught in the middle.
While it’s certainly gritty and suspenseful, though, Hungry Hearts also feels awkward and unbalanced. The opening scene—with the couple meeting in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant—seems completely out of place. And some odd choices in the film’s direction (like the blaring Flashdance soundtrack or the sudden use of a fish-eye lens at one point in the middle of the story) make it feel stranger and stranger as the story progresses—until it all comes together in a totally unexpected conclusion.
Hungry Hearts takes the anxiety that new parents feel and magnifies it to terrifying proportions. But, instead of telling a truly haunting story, it tries a little too hard to be creative, focusing on things that don’t really matter instead of the things that do. And the result is a tense but off-balance thriller.
Ed. Note: Hungry Hearts is currently showing in select theaters and on demand through streaming services like Amazon Instant Video.
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