Swedish director Lukas Moodysson has always tested boundaries in terms of subject matter since his debut with Fucking Åmål. But with his most recent film, A Hole in My Heart, he takes a blow torch to them… Shot under extreme secrecy and set in a dingy suburban apartment, the film features some of the most shocking and unsettling images in recent memory. Moodysson focuses on Rickard (Thorsten Flinck) and his painfully shy son Eric (Björn Almroth), who spends most of his days holed up in his room listening to spectacularly abrasive industrial music, presumably in an attempt to drown out what’s going on in the rest of the apartment. His father, an amateur pornographer, is shooting his latest opus with a friend, Geko (Goran Marjanovic), and a young woman named Tess (Sanna Bråding). As the trio gets drunk and more impressed with themselves (they seem to think they’re celebrities by virtue of being involved with this tawdry effort), they lose what few inhibitions they had and their behaviour grows more and more disturbing.

In some ways, A Hole in My Heart suggests the writings of the Marquis de Sade—especially in its emphasis on the bedlam that erupts when social codes are entirely abandoned… No doubt Moodysson is satirizing the whole reality television trend and its faux celebrities. That said, as relentless as the film is, there are some grace points… Suffused with a near-apocalyptic rage, A Hole in My Heart is a deeply courageous film by one of international cinema’s most exciting young filmmakers. It is definitely not for the squeamish. –TIFF

Director

Lukas Moodysson

With his first two feature efforts, Fucking Åmål (1998) and Together (2000), Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson earned a strong following for his acute, gentle sense of social satire and his remarkably well-drawn and sympathetic characters. Though his third feature, the soul-shredding Lilja 4-Ever, marked a notably dark turn in terms of content for Moodysson, his sense of characterization was perhaps stronger than ever, and the stark tale of a young Russian girl forced into prostitution gained him international acclaim. A native of the South Sweden burg of Lund, Moodysson was the son of hardworking farmers who hailed from the small community of Smaland. When the opportunity arose for Moodysson’s father to study engineering in the 1960s, he relocated to the university town of Lund, funding his education with work at a local hardware store; it was there that Karl Frederik Lukas Moodysson was born in January of 1969. The future director was exposed to an early film influence at age 12 when… read more

With his first two feature efforts, Fucking Åmål (1998) and Together (2000), Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson earned a strong following for his acute, gentle sense of social satire and his remarkably well-drawn and sympathetic characters. Though his third feature, the soul-shredding Lilja 4-Ever, marked a notably dark turn in terms of content for Moodysson, his sense of characterization was perhaps stronger than ever, and the stark tale of a young Russian girl forced into prostitution gained him international acclaim. A native of the South Sweden burg of Lund, Moodysson was the son of hardworking farmers who hailed from the small community of Smaland. When the opportunity arose for Moodysson’s father to study engineering in the 1960s, he relocated to the university town of Lund, funding his education with work at a local hardware store; it was there that Karl Frederik Lukas Moodysson was born in January of 1969. The future director was exposed to an early film influence at age 12 when he watched the film Fanny and Alexander; he strongly relating to the character of Alexander due to his parents’ recent divorce. A misfit in school who turned to poetry to express himself, Moodysson penned five poetry collections and a novel by the age of 23. He later turned to film in order to explore the world around him, and in the process he claims he became less “self-centered.”

Moodysson’s film studies began at Stockholm’s Dramatiska Institutet, and following his graduation, he helmed a trio of short films that found his abilities as a filmmaker growing considerably. By the mid-‘90s Moodysson was ready to make the leap to features, and it was the burgeoning director’s boredom that ultimately lead to his debut feature, Fucking Åmål. The tale of a teenage girl coming of age in a small town where nothing ever happens, the film won Moodysson international attention for both his smart characters and the tenderness with which he portrayed them. His follow-up feature, Together, triumphantly avoided the dreaded sophomore slump to tell the softly satirical tale of an idealistic commune. With characters equally as well-drawn and multi-dimensional as those in Fucking Åmål, it was this film that showed a filmmaker truly coming into his own and subtly shifting into a notably more political style. Christened Sweden’s Angry Young Man and reviled by many for his defiant speech upon winning the awards for Best Screenplay and Best Directon at the Guldbagge Awards (Sweden’s main film awards) for Fucking Åmål, Moodysson takes the reputation in stride with the belief that his films will ultimately be his legacy.

If Together hinted at a more politicized direction for the filmmaker, his third feature, Lilja 4-Ever, unquestionably solidified his growing concern with international politics and their effects on the downtrodden. After witnessing Gothenburg’s anti-capitalist riots in 2001, Moodysson’s political passion was re-ignited, and he was inspired to write the unrelentingly bleak tale of a young girl left alone when her mother abandons her to seek out a better life in the United States. Determined to expose the dark side of capitalistic society, he crafted a horrifically affecting film that truly made the audience experience the hopeless plight of its protagonist. Swearing to avoid the lure of Miramax and the career path of fellow Swedish director Lasse Halleström, Moodysson eschewed the acceptance of the West in order to retain creative control of his films and to avoid moving to Los Angeles. In 2002, it was announced that the remake rights to Together had been acquired by Focus Features and that the film was to be directed by filmmaker Miguel Arteta.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:265045)

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