Feed Me With Your Words Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
Why Watch Feed Me With Your Words?
- If you like brooding family dramas
- To follow the mystery of a missing son
- For a film that plays into gender stereotypes
From: Slovenia, Europe Watch: Trailer, JustWatch, Amazon Prime, Hoopla Next: Stitches, The Last of Us, By A Sharp Knife
The Awkward Silence Of Generational Differences
In the opening of Feed Me With Your Words, Matej receives an unexpected call from his father. He hasn’t spoken to him in over 10 years. However, the call is urgent. His brother has disappeared in Italy and his father needs help finding him.
Matej goes to help his father but his reunion never feels comfortable. Instead of a welcome, his father anxiously orders them to get moving with their search. In their drive to Italy, he keeps silent despite Matej’s attempts to start a conversation. It’s his silence that makes their reunion awkward. It also makes him appear less trustworthy and empathetic. We never get to know him as he rarely reveals anything. You begin to feel that his character and what happened with his son (who was living with him) is hidden in everything that is unsaid.
Poor Communication fuels the Mystery
Matej’s father’s silence also fuels the mystery of Feed Me With Your Words. Until the final act, we know very little about his son. Just that he went to Italy in pursuit of the handwriting of Jesus. His silence becomes more eerie when we find out what his son’s bedroom looks like in the second part of the film. It’s a room you’d expect to see in a horror film. It’s at the top of the house, covered in sheets of paper with strange writing on and with very little light. It feels like something the father might mention to Matej. His silence either confirms that they’re both aware of their son/brother’s strange obsession or that the father is hiding something. Either way, their lack of communication keeps us in the dark, fueling the mystery of the film.
Playing into the Family Gender Stereotypes
Feed Me With Your Words also has some pretty familiar gendered stereotypes built around the family roles. Firstly there’s the male rivalry between father and his now independent son with a family. They’re both stubborn, don’t talk much, and get very defensive. In contrast, the female characters (the wife, the daughter, and the grandma) are driven by their emotions. Ana, Matej’s wife, gets into a unspoken battle with Matej’s mum over her daughter. She becomes more and more jealous of her daughter’s new relationship with her grandma and scared that she might lose her. Lastly, there’s Robert, Matej’s missing brother. He’s the reckless younger brother that follows his dreams without considering that it might not provide him a future. Feed Me With Your Words plays into these gender stereotypes to focus more on the mystery. Because the character roles are fairly common on screen, we can guess how the characters will develop so the director can spend less time character building, and more time slowly revealing the mystery.
What to Watch Next
Whilst the combination of slow burning mystery, cold colors, and brooding family relationships might make you think of David Fincher, these elements are also pretty common in Eastern European cinema. Stitches (Serbia) and By A Sharp Knife (Slovakia) are two examples but you’ll even see similar elements in festival faves The Load (Serbia) and Witnesses (Croatia).
Or if you’re interested in watching more films with prophet-like transient characters check out The Fisher King and The Last of Us.
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