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
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
Its certainly isn't Moodysson's greatest effort and i felt at this time and a bit during Lilya 4 ever, he started to believe his own hype as been the new Bergman. I always felt he was more like Mike Leigh mixed with Alan clarke myself but this is when his Art avant garde peroid kicked in and sadly along with Container he started to lose the plot. Sanna brading gives the movie its little heart it has.
that's a pretty wierd movie. some funny & some shocking moments - i really like the stuff with the barbie.
Rarely has half a year's wait been so richly rewarded. Early in August 2009 Jack Stevenson had promised a review copy of his forthcoming book
This is a experimental film already not my favorite type of films but I decided to give it a try based on the director. It was a mistake.
The set up is two friends make adult films in there… read review