A Hole In My Heart

With the brittleness of his last major release, Lilja 4-ever still fresh in the mind, Lukas Moodysson takes desperation to a whole new level with the relentlessly depressing A Hole in My Heart. Largely set in a small suburban Swedish flat, we follow Rickard (Thorsetn Flinck); a wannabe 'filmmaker' who believes that making a porn movie will be his ticket to drugs and sex on demand. He's aided in his desire by his nasty friend Geko (Goran Marjanovic) and the star of their film, Tess (Sanna Brading), a young girl who only wants to be a famous porn actress so she can snag a date with David Beckham. Cast amid this depravity is Rickard's son, Eric (Bjorn Almroth) dreaming of escaping the mayhem that his father has engineered and joining his American mother.

Moodysson has already established a formidable reputation as director of some note, but it's difficult to see what he's trying to get at with A Hole in My Heart. Uncompromising and brutal, the film never really seems to make its point succinctly enough to validate its existence. There's a half-hearted attempt at justification with the fact that the porn star is a failed applicant for the reality TV show Big Brother, but even this feels forced and hollow. Pushing the boundaries is all well and good, but there's got to be point to the brutality.