The Complexities of Motherhood: On Hungry Hearts
by Fariha Roísín
Bad mothers are Medusas, ostracized by humanity for not having that maternal instinct. Assumed to be creatures of comfort, and rage, bad mothers are abhorrently disdained. Society encourages the idea that women are supposed to be mothers. It’s genetic. It’s biological.
An ex-boyfriend’s mother suffered from post-natal depression for several years after she had him. I remember the details vaguely: she was ostracized by her community because she was chastised for lacking the natural knack for the job. Motherhood is a teleological practice for women. They are supposed to want babies, and if they don’t — they are deemed to be against their own nature. The parameters are exclusionary. Pro-life campaigners portray mothers as the beacons of hope — the future for the next generation. But women, pre-maternity, who have abortions, are painted as devils and stripped of their womanhood. We divest them, because when women don’t want kids, or aren’t good at having kids, they’re aren’t contributing; they are valueless.
For me, Hungry Hearts by Saverio Costanzo highlighted this phenomena. It’s an Italian/American film starring the very American, and dapper, Adam Driver as Jude, and the ethereal, well dressed, Italian Alba Rohrwacher, as Mina. The films starts off with one of the most romantic and sumptuous film openers I have ever seen. Beautifully staged, Mina enters a washroom, the door that closes behind her, and locks, is a bright prairie blue. She’s wearing canary yellow; pale and thwarted against a smelly restroom, as soon as she sets foot, her face transforms into disgust, covering her mouth, she breathes through her delicate laced fingers. Then enter Jude from the opposite side of the frame — he is the culprit of the overwhelming miasma. His farts have imploded the atmosphere of the bathroom, and as he sighs, and breathes through his own devastating guttural cramps, they make eye contact. It’s good because it’s unexpected. It’s impactful because of its synchronicity. Romanticism is marketed to us via the hope of serendipity, there’s something that’s very encouraging about the chance meeting. Just imagine — it could be you in a Chinatown restaurant, forced to meet your true love via fate, as he shits the pain away.
At first, even though you know it’s coming, you tenderly wait for them to fall in love. As the golden hues blaze over their apprehensive smiles — and as Jude remains for an entirety in his steadfast crouched position — you wonder when will be the moment that they look to each other, and feel connected, guts pouring and all. This opening is the most honest part of the film. Two lovers at first glance; the inevitability of attraction. If Costanzo kept this narrative strong, it could have been such a beautiful film, but it was devastating — and three weeks after my first viewing, I’m still haunted by it.
After their bathroom interlude, Jude and Mina begin their romance. They have warm sex, walk across Amsterdam Avenue looking effortlessly chic, living in a techni-colored hip paradise. Jude’s love for Mina is portrayed as fierce, his intensity is glaring — maybe this is a trait of Driver, who is an impassioned actor in every emotion. Whether he laughs or cries, he is present. Things between them only come to a momentary halt when Mina gets a call that she has to leave New York for her job. So, naturally, they decide to marry.
At their wedding Jude sings a beautifully tragic and teary rendition of Tu Sí Na Cosa Grande Pe Me — bloodroot lines the bottoms of his eyes as he sings to his love. Later they dance to What a Feeling, the Flashdance original. Their grins are identically pronounced: Jude’s is fleshy and toothy, Mina’s is subtle, but undeniable. They love each other, and it shows.
Soon Mina becomes pregnant and her body is unfailingly frail during the course of her pregnancy. She is wrought with an emotional heaviness, a longing that is never articulated. Maybe it’s Costanzo’s way of showing the language barrier, the assault of lost in translation between two lovers — -Mina is always searching, yearning; Jude is always ready to provide, yet can never quite get there. Though, he constantly watches her with a cautionary twitch. One day, she consults a psychic on a whim. They tell her that the baby will be an “indigo child” — as in that it will have supernatural powers. The story itself is adapted from Il Bambino Indaco, a novel by Marco Franzoso. But that story is never about the baby; throughout the film the baby never even has a name — it’s about the disintegration of a relationship because of a woman’s “irrational” choices.
Slowly, the baby is eating at Mina. She faints at a friend’s art opening in one shot, and then in another, during her natural pregnancy, she’s unable to dilate for an effective natural birth because her amniotic fluid has dried out. Two strikes already against her successful motherhood.
When the baby eventually comes, there’s a palpable tension between the two romancers. As expected, they’re no longer doe-eyed towards one another. Instead, the baby oscillates from each other’s arms and care; like a pendulum the baby swings with discontent. Driver constantly does that strange mouthy dance where he grinds his back teeth, as if rollerblading them together, and Rohrwacher is famished into oblivion, a haunting of what she once was — a robust and full, happy woman.
Then, she begins getting protective of the baby. She’s a germaphobe — all shoes must be taken off before entering the house; radiation avoider, all phones are to be left far from the baby — and because Mina’s a vegan, so is the child. All the corners of their once idyllic apartment are now babyproofed by silver duct tape. Mina seems to dictate everything. Eventually, as weeks, and months, pass by, the baby is still not growing, Jude begins to worry.
It’s interesting that two of the lyrics in Tu Sí Na Cosa Grande Pe Me, the song that Jude serenades Mina with on their wedding day translate to: “Although you feel like dying you don’t tell me/and don’t make me understand it, but why.”
At a certain point the film turns on Mina as we, along with Jude, fail to understand why she’s being the way that she is. There’s no explanation, no hint of motivation. At no point is it discussed why she’s so protective — or why she has all of these ideas of purifying the baby. The only thing that could be inspiration, is the psychic — and though its intimated, its never voiced. It could be that because of this baby’s powers, in order for them to truly be powerful, Mina thinks they need to be given a strict regimented diet and lifestyle. Nothing else paints an explanation. In fact, Costanzo absurdly decides to use a fisheye lense in a certain scene with Jude and Mina — which only emphasizes Mina’s frailty, an insinuation that if can’t look after herself, how could she care about the baby? Costanzo makes us hate her.
I felt this story (and thus the film) to be irrationally anti-woman. The two women in this film that have any agency are Mina, and Jude’s mother — Anne (Roberta Maxwell). This is juxtaposed against Jude, who is a fully fleshed human being who feels — and who he is triggered by Mina’s inadequate parenting. He goes to doctors (despite Mina telling him not to, she doesn’t trust or believe in Western medicine) because his desire for the baby’s health seems greater, or stronger, or rather — rational. They way he mobilizes himself against her, this woman who seems to be destroying the health of his baby, unwittingly, is with steadfast determination. I felt glad that Jude was such a good dad, against Mina’s terrible mothering. And at a certain point, I felt manipulated for thinking that.
In the film, everything was designed to make you hate Mina. Inevitably, if we had more of an idea of what was impacting her decisions for the baby, then maybe this film wouldn’t have been so starkly one-sided. Although, Jude is portrayed as flawed — one time he pushes Mina to the ground, and another time he hits her — he is still understood as a character. There is a complexity that resides inside of him. He is given the opportunity for a defense because he’s doing it all out of the love for the baby. Mina, on the other hand, is a one-dimensional baby hater. Interestingly, both times Jude hits her, Mina bounces back, a vengeful glint in her eyes. You think she wants retribution — there’s ominous, unsubtle horror beats whenever she’s around — but she never gets her recompense. The only person who gets it is Anne. And that ends with a sad, disturbing denouement.
Good mothers are cultural signifiers, but we mainly have a host of “bad moms” — Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, Anthony Perkins staging his mother in Psycho, Suzanne Clement in J’ai Tué Ma Mere. Culture, itself, seems to have serious mommy issues, but why are those issues portrayed so much more demonic, so much more rage filled, than having daddy ones? So often, bad mothers are the reasons behind serial killers, or disregarded murderers — as if insinuating that if Jeffrey Dahmer had a better mother (who wasn’t fighting with his father all the time) he wouldn’t have killed so many young men. Moral of the story? Blame women for everything.
In another film that I watched at TIFF, Cake, Jennifer Aniston, as Claire Simmons, finally declares to herself, “I was a good mother.” I cried for a long time after that moment. I still get emotional when I think of it. Rarely have I seen a woman on screen be given the chance to commend themselves for the tireless hours that they have dedicated to their child. Claire’s realization comes at the end of an enduring internal struggle after the death of her son. Throughout the whole film she feels as though she lost — that she was a bad mom because her son didn’t live.
The weight that weighs you. There’s that feeling that your soul has been physically torn away from you, that the flesh that was there, is no longer present. Loss of a child, for a mother, is a tangible internal sensation. Fatherhood can’t really quite encapsulate. I still think of my baby that I didn’t have when I was 18. Every anniversary I feel a heaviness in my body that I cannot even describe; it pains me like nothing else. I have never been a mother — but I think I have once felt what it feels to be that protective, that simultaneously afraid and affected by something that is entirely yours, and of you.
“I’m a cool mom,” says Amy Poehler in Mean Girls — as if that’s a rarity, as if that separates her from all the rest. It’s supposed to be funny, but what does even a cool mom represent? We wouldn’t know because of the limitations that women are already boxed in. Again, it comes back to good versus evil. If you’re a woman, you can only be one of the two. You’re never given a choice to like Mina, to understand what’s driving her, but ultimately: it’s fear, it’s a desire for that baby’s life to be better. But I felt a refusal, perhaps by Costanzo, even if unconsciously, for that storyline. He wants you to walk away and feel confused by your state of emotions, especially if you’re a female yourself.
He doesn’t realize how toxic the end really is: just another film portraying women as disposable; that, if you can’t understand a woman, she’s probably a crazy bitch. Nothing about her is rational, so there’s no point in interacting with her as a rational human being. And ultimately, these representations encourage violence against women, these representations are what create serial killers, not their lack of mothering. Once we’re ready to absolve women of whatever sins we’ve socially implanted on them, we’ll be able to digest their complexities — we’ll be able to accept their flaws with reason. Because maybe what’s actually really irrational is our expectations — not the other way around.
Fariha Roísín is a writer extraordinaire. Follow her rambunctious tweeting @fariharoisin.