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Jun 02, 2015 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

If anything can be said for Saverio Costanzo’s Hungry Hearts, it’s unconventional. New York twenty-something Jude (Adam Driver) meets Italian girl Mina (Alba Rorwacher) when they’re trapped together in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant. This opening is one take lasting seven minutes shot inside a phone-booth size restroom where much of the dialogue pertains to the nasty smell of the deuce that Jude’s freshly dropped. This is where the young couple’s relationship begins; the film continues downhill from there.

Hungry Hearts proceeds at an unorthodox pace, dwelling for too long on seemingly small moments in their relationship before making huge leaps in time to get to the next story beat. Mina discovers she’s pregnant; skip ahead to a rushed wedding. There are complications in the pregnancy; skip ahead to the birth. Mina is paranoid about germs and taking their child outside of the apartment; skip ahead to Mina voluntarily starving her infant to death. Once the child is born, Hungry Hearts transforms from a lyrical romance into a frustrating stab at psychological thriller. The crux of this shift lies in Mina’s increasingly unhinged mental state: she believes the child is special (as in, Messiah-like) and is afraid of both medical professionals as well as, it seems, a normal, healthy diet. In the latter half of the film, Jude must effectively rescue his baby son from its own crazy mother.

On a story and script level, Hungry Hearts doesn’t work. It’s difficult to tell whether much of the dialogue was improvised or if the performances just make them feel that way; in the second half, too many scenes boil down to shouted arguments over the child’s care. It’s not an interesting plot, but that doesn’t mean the film isn’t interesting to watch. Costanzo’s unconventional pacing does yield a few wonderful moments early on, such as a wedding scored to “Flashdance… What A Feeling,” and the intimate conversation that takes place when Mina meets Jude’s mother partway into their reception. There are many, many interesting shots, though the more experimental they get—including the gimmicky use of fisheye lens—the more distracting they become. In general, the further Hungry Hearts proceeds beyond its odorous opening scene, the less inclined you’ll feel to keep following along.

Author rating: 3.5/10