The subject line is the exact opposite of the last movie review I wrote here, and I hadn't even seen this awful movie. As I've gotten older I've come to like the expression, "if you can't say something good, don't say anything," but this movie is so bad I've got to add my review to the few negative ones here.The beginning of the movie is in fact one of the better scenes, and it's stupid, and implausible for numerous reasons. Don't tell me two bathroom doors are going to suddenly become inoperable, it's just not believable.The movie goes downhill from there. The couple who meet in the weird bathroom scene get married and have a child, and I could already see problems with the script, but you never know. In fact, from the point they have the child the movie becomes an unmitigated disaster. She is very mentally ill and has "New Age" ideas about how to raise the child. I am not saying that the two are related, though maybe to the writer they are in some way. Whatever, her ideas are not working, and the child is not developing properly, and it's more than just that it's too small. The husband (Adam Driver performs quite well in his role, somehow) finally has enough of it and has to sneak the baby out to a doctor, who tells him the baby is in trouble. The mother is not only very mentally ill, but also quite stubborn: it's going to be her way, and only her way. Sometimes when told the truth about the baby or given advice she simply acts like a deaf mute and says nothing. Other times she repeats the same mantras she believes, like some kind of robot. Her face constantly show misery and she's always sullen. When the husband talks to her with kindness and obvious affection, she is often rude and picks fights.I am not an expert on these things, but to me it was obvious that the actress didn't like her character. Maybe a more skilled actress could have done more with the material, and (I may be way off) such an actress might have made suggestions about improving a badly written character. Driver's character grows in his fatherhood; the female lead never changes in any way, and it really affects the (entertainment) value of the movie.I've rarely seen a movie, even a bad movie, where the camera work wasn't correct. Whoever did the camera work in this movie acted like a student, trying out different things just to see how they would turn out, and whoever did the edit retained some awful cinematography, or whatever the word is. There were many close-ups that were unnecessary (no, they had nothing to do with "intimacy"), and worse other scenes with weird camera angles and distortions that just added to the displeasure of watching such a bad movie.

Hungry Hearts is a phrase play on words. It is a potent combination of words. The film showcases the blurred sense of what is conceived as normal in modern society. Normal as in interpersonal relationships, honesty, frankness, the depth of knowing one another, as well as in self awareness. The personal freedom, freedom of choices, what is considered to be an informed choice. How long can a partner respect the choices of the loved one? What is love and at what point does it start to turn into crippling obsession or mental illness. When the heart is hungry it clouds the senses. "Its a phase mum, it will pass." If you are in it you can't see the full spectrum of it. A spectator can. A wise grandmother whose heart is not hungry anymore, can feel the real responsibility of bringing up a child of a selfless point of you. It is not about you or your partner, it is about that new person that has been brought into this world hungry!

"Hungry Hearts" starts out strongly. The opening few minutes is set in a bathroom in the basement of a Chinese restaurant. Mina and Jude (total strangers at the time) somehow get trapped in there together when the door gets jammed - just as he's rendered the bathroom - well - let's just say it didn't smell very fresh. It was actually a fun and humorous way to introduce the two protagonists of the movie. But it should be noted that the opening scene really is the only fun and humorous scene of an otherwise very heavy and even at times depressing movie. Which isn't to say that it wasn't good, but the opening few minutes doesn't really set us up for the rest of the film, at least in terms of its tone. It's also not really what I would call a thriller, even though it's billed as a thriller. A psychological drama - tense at times, perhaps - but it really doesn't have all that many thrills.After the opening scene the movie settles down for a little while, basically showing us rather quickly the evolution of Mina and Jude's relationship. They sleep together, they fall in love, she gets pregnant, they get married, they have a baby boy. All that happens in rather quick succession, and it's after the birth of the baby that the movie develops its more tense atmosphere.Basically, Mina and Jude disagree about how to raise a child. It seems to start when Mina is told by some sort of psychic that her child is "special - an "indigo baby" (some sort of silly new age idea that I had never heard of until I watched this.) Mina treats the baby strangely. She weans him very early, won't feed him any meat or protein, won't take him outside into the sunlight. It's all rather bizarre. Jude finally gets worried because the baby isn't growing. A doctor tells him the baby is undernourished, etc., etc. The two find themselves at odds over how to raise the child - which isn't all that unusual. Different parents have different parenting styles - but usually it's a conflict between the parents, with no real harm done to the child. But in this case, Mina is hurting the child. And she's doing damage to herself. She's a vegan, but more than that I thought there were suggestions that she had an eating disorder. There were references to her wasting away, and director Saverio Costanzo used some very effective camera angles that accentuated how thin she was, which suggested that she was mentally ill. Because this is billed as a thriller, you keep expecting that angle to become front and centre, but it really doesn't. There's some scenes where the suspense is built especially through the use of music - and you expect something to happen, but then it dissipates - until the end, when something shocking does indeed happen. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I did think it was pretty good.Alba Rohrwacher was the actress who played Mina - and she was very good in the role; completely believable. Her accent at times made it hard to capture some of the dialogue completely, but she did a fine job, and - to me - her performance was the highlight of the movie. Adam Driver as Jude was probably more central to the story. Jude was torn between his love for Mina and his concern for his child. Driver didn't take anything away from the movie, but I didn't think he nailed his part as well as Rohrwacher did hers.If you're expecting a classic type of thriller, this will probably disappoint you. But it's not a bad movie. It's well acted and it raises some valid issues about different parenting styles - albeit taken to an extreme. (7/10)

Greetings again from the darkness. Everyone loves a good "How did you two meet?" story, and the best of these stories somehow makes the couple more interesting. It's pretty tough to beat the meet-cute of Jude and Mina in the opening scene from writer/director Saverio Costanzo … even if it does take place in the tight and pungent confines of restaurant restroom. It's a terrific start to a movie that has no real shot at getting better from there.Jude (an excellent Adam Driver) and Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) fall directly into bed and in love … directly from the outhouse. We catch glimpses of their romance, and quickly accept them as a well-suited, warm-yet-quirky couple. An unexpected pregnancy kicks off a gradual and troubling change in Mina. This change is turbo-charged once the baby arrives. Mina registers in the extreme of the mother's instincts vs. modern medicine debate. She is all about purity for her baby – food and environment. There is nothing wrong with that, right? Well, when the baby doesn't grow and develop, it's understandable that the dad might freak a bit, no matter how understanding or trusting he claims to be.The story becomes the unraveling of a once-promising relationship, as well as the unraveling of a once seemingly normal woman. With the tone of an early Roman Polanski movie, Costanzo's film (from Marco Franzoso's novel) has very real horror overtones, while playing out like a real life parenting drama … or a psychological thriller. The real turning point for Mina's character seems to occur after a Psychic Reading where the Clairvoyant labels her baby as an Indigo child. Mina believes this and her psychotic actions create the intense worries of Jude and his mother (Roberta Maxwell).With the current uproar of vaccinations, there is certainly a modern day link to the story line of mother's instincts vs. doctor's orders. But with a lawyer recommending kidnapping, and a triumvirate of desperate characters: father, mother, grandmother, there doesn't seem to be much factual data here … rather it's an effective scare tactic.