A Hole in My Heart is a brave, shocking cinematic experience intimately filmed in a cramped Swedish apartment and following a total of four characters through acts of physical degradation, sensual perversity and emotional isolation. Rikcard and his friend Geko are filming zero-budget porn movies with an uninhibited young woman named Tess. The trio is watched by Eric, Rickard's creepy teenage son, who fantasizes about Tess whilst muttering darkly and making bizarre contraptions out of wires and electrical equipment.
A fearless filmmaking exercise from start to finish, A Hole in My Heart is exceedingly kinetic yet always in control of its own shock value. An extreme but somehow more authentic version of the worldwide craze for "reality TV", the images young Swedish auteur Lukas Moodysson (Lilya 4-ever, 2002) puts on screen are never easy to look at but even more difficult to turn away from.
It is a challenging, engrossing film for those who can take it, asking uncomfortable questions about celebrity, voyeurism and the moral vacuum of 21st-century living. It could be a scream of rage; it may be a desperate prayer. |
