It
is based on an Italian novel, but echoes of the notorious Atlanta vegan baby starvation case ring throughout Saverio Costanzo’s mostly English language
drama. A new Italian mother parents too much with her intuitive feelings,
ignoring conventional pediatric nutrition and medicine in Costanzo’s Hungry Hearts, which had its
U.S. premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, with a screening at the Montclair
Film Festival soon to follow.
Jude,
an Upper Westside engineer, and Mina, a PR flack for the Italian consul,
meet-cute, under slightly gross circumstances. Enjoy the scatological humor
while it lasts, because there will be major friction in their married lives.
There are ominous portents of trouble to come during her difficult pregnancy,
but Mina’s manic New Aginess really starts to manifest in highly problematic ways
when she starts imposing a strict vegan diet on the infant.
At
first, Jude is more worried about his underweight son’s persistent cold-like
symptoms. However, when he finally sneaks the crib monster to a doctor, he is
told the sniffles are “the least of his concern.” The boy is so malnourished,
he simply isn’t growing. However, whenever Jude questions Mina’s dietary
decisions, she takes it as a personal attack on her legitimacy as a mother and
a person. Yet, some things should be said before it is too late.
Hungry paints an alarming
portrait of everyday extremism and the slow but steady evolution of
conventional vegetarianism to reckless child endangerment. It springs some
abrupt course corrections on viewers, but there are reasons for the sharp tonal
shifts. While the jokey prelude seems like it belongs in a different film, it
helps explain why Jude defers to Mina for so long. There is always love there,
but it turns into something very dark and ultimately dangerous.
Ordinarily,
the nebbish Adam Driver and the pixyish Alba Rohrwacher would never look like a
convincing couple, but cinematographer Fabio Cianchetti’s lens serves as a
harsh leveler, ruthlessly focusing on and magnifying the imperfections of their
skin. Frankly, in the case of Rohrwacher (who steamed up the screen in Soldini’s
Come Undone) this is a much more
complicated process, but she compellingly portrays Mina’s physical and
emotional decline as she starts to shun direct sunlight and protein. It is a
seriously scary transformation.
In
contrast, Driver’s Jude always seems to be a step behind the beat, for no good
reason. Just for the record, Mina never says to him: “Hey Jude, don’t let me
down,” which seems like an obvious oversight. Regardless, they often seem to
nurse special resentments only possible through intimate familiarity. There are
also brief but pitch perfect supporting turns from Medium co-star Jake Weber as the calm but concerned pediatrician
and Roberta Maxwell as Jude’s concerned but not necessarily calm mother.
