[Film Review] Hungry Hearts (2014)

They say mother knows best, but what if she doesn’t? They also say it takes a village to raise a child, but Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) wants to go it alone. Hungry Hearts (2014) starts with indie rom-com vibes and ends up in twisted thriller territory, as we follow Mina and her husband Jude (Adam Driver) through Mina’s pregnancy and the first few months of their son’s life. 

Mina and Jude meet when they get locked in the restaurant bathroom together. Add in the awkwardness of Jude’s recent stomach upset and Mina not holding back on commenting on the foul smell they both find themselves trapped with, and the whole situation could have spelt disaster for the couple. Instead, we join them sometime later, now living together in New York City. 

Mina works for the Italian embassy and finds out that her employer is looking to relocate her in two months. Jude is keen for her to stay, and give up her job rather than risk them splitting up. Later that night, the couple have sex, and while Mina quite clearly, and repeatedly, asks Jude not to ejaculate inside her, he ignores her and does it anyway.

Mina soon finds out she is pregnant, and the pair quickly marry before Mina’s bump has even started showing. Mina and Jude’s personalities are soon shown to be very different. Jude is an engineer, and his thoughts are grounded in logic and reason. Mina is troubled by a recurring dream about a hunter killing a deer on their wedding night. She visits a fortune teller to find out more about her child. She decides to trust her body and her motherly instincts over what she is being told by doctors. And this quickly causes clashes between the pair. 

After complications mean that Mina cannot have the water birth that she wants, she ends up being given a caesarian despite Jude promising he wouldn’t allow that to happen. For Mina, everything about this baby has been done to her against her will. Jude ejaculates inside her without her consent, and she’s cut open without her consent as well. Mina needs to take control of her life, and her baby, and she does this by pushing everyone else away.

This places a huge strain on the couple’s relationship. For Jude, it’s hard for him to be at work all day and trust that Mina is looking after their son properly. For Mina, she spends all day with the baby and therefore wants to make the important choices about what he eats, when he goes outside, and who he sees. The main breakdown for the couple comes when Jude discovers that their son isn’t growing and that something drastic will need to change to ensure he grows up healthy. 

Hungry Hearts is a challenging watch, especially if you’re a parent. I empathised so much with Mina’s desire to look after her son in exactly the way she envisioned. Jude and her doctor like to tell Mina what is normal concerning pregnancy and raising a small child, but Mina has this deeper understanding of her child that came from carrying him for nine months and spending every waking moment with him in the first few months of his life. 

However, it’s chilling to watch Mina try to use her twisted logic to fight her way out of situations with Jude when the audience is fully on his side. It’s easy for the audience to judge Mina’s actions from the outside, but by this point, she is fully absorbed in the situation. She has created the life she thinks is best for her child, and Jude, the doctors, and Jude’s mother, Anne (Roberta Maxwell), are merely interlopers who are risking the safe bubble she had constructed around her baby.

Alba Rohrwacher’s performance as Mina is absolutely sensational. We go from sympathising with her fully at the start of the film, to slowly watching her lose her grip on her life. Her behaviour is maddening and yet a beautiful representation of the ways motherhood can affect your instincts, your thoughts, and your actions. 

Adam Driver is equally stunning in his portrayal of a man who is desperate to keep his family together and support his emotionally fragile wife, and yet he knows he must act to save his son’s life. He desperately tries to suggest solution after solution to keep Mina feeling safe, but even he has his limit. His mother helps Jude with the support he is missing in his marriage and provides him with the confidence he needs to take the required steps to save his son. 

Hungry Hearts is a tale of three parents, each doing what they think is best for their child, as well as showing the complete extremes they will go to when their children are involved. This film is an experience, but perhaps one that you will only watch once. The ending is bleak and yet so full of hope at the same time. It shows that destroying old relationships can be necessary to build stronger bonds elsewhere. 

It may seem like a simple relationship drama, but the jarring camera angles and the hits of Alfred Hitchcock-style strings show that horror can be lurking in even the most normal-seeming situation. It’s an important reminder that we never know what is going on behind closed doors, even if those doors are in your own apartment. 

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