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A Hole in My Heart (2005)
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Reviews Counted:17
Fresh:7
Rotten:10
Average Rating:4/10
Theatrical Release:14-01-2005
Synopsis: Filmed in secrecy with a small crew over seventeen days, Lukas Moodysson's fourth feature is set in a nightmarish apartment in suburban Sweden, where middle-aged Rickard (Thorsten Flinck), is... Filmed in secrecy with a small crew over seventeen days, Lukas Moodysson's fourth feature is set in a nightmarish apartment in suburban Sweden, where middle-aged Rickard (Thorsten Flinck), is making a porn film with his brutish friend, Geko (Goran Marjanovic), and a troubled young woman, Tess (Sanna Brading). Meanwhile, Rickard's sensitive teenage son, Eric (Bjorn Almroth), stays in his room, avoiding the increasingly disturbing proceedings by listening to loud industrial music and tending to his pet earthworms. Over the next few days, Rickard and his partners will take drugs, film their brutal couplings, and play dangerous power games, revealing their individual psychological wounds along the way. In sharp contrast to his lighthearted, tolerant earlier works, SHOW ME LOVE (1998) and TOGETHER (2001), Lukas Moodysson plumbs depths in HOLE IN MY HEART. This film will fail to disturb only the most unflappable moviegoer. With a series of disturbing close-ups, night-vision confessionals, and surgical footage--intercut with with bursts of earsplitting industrial noise--the result is undeniably confrontational. But beneath the ugly surface, the bravest and most open-minded moviegoers will see that Moodysson is making very valid statements about family, machismo, reality television, the mainstreaming of pornography that are in perfect synch with the humanism of his previous films. This film screened at the 2005 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. [More]
Starring: Thorsten Flinck, Bjorn Almroth, Sanna Brading, Goran Marjanovic
Starring: Thorsten Flinck, Bjorn Almroth, Sanna Brading, Goran Marjanovic
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Screenwriter: Lukas Moodysson
Producer: Lars Jonsson
Studio: Newmarket Films
Reviews for A Hole in My Heart
Sends your brain whirring as well as your stomach churning -- quite a feat.
The question is: do we need to be hauled through scene after scene of drab, dehumanized behavior so that we may see, or at least hear, humanity restored at the end?
Moodysson comes on like de Sade crossed with Godard, yet by locking us outside of his characters, he fails to make them even contemptuously compelling.
An experimental, transgressive work that pretty much fails on every level.
Moodysson doesn’t use this borrowed aesthetic to study what’s on his plate; he’s just out to cause a scene.
The film is yet another proof of Moodysson's fearlessness and his willingness to push forward and break through the boundaries of convention.
It's harrowing to watch just how far these four actors are willing to go to bring Moodysson's vision to life, and their dedication commands respect, even as it dares you to keep your eyes on the screen.
Will disgust many (probably most) viewers as it cements Moodysson's reputation as one of today's most daring filmmakers.
The degradation inflicted on the characters in Moodyson’s A Hole in My Heart is also inflicted on the viewers... an excruciating and appalling experience.
It's a mystery what the Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson thought he was up to in A Hole in My Heart, a movie teeming with ugly images and grotesque behavior.
Moodysson doesn't seem to realize the difference between a film that's disturbing yet provocative, and a film that's just amateurish and gross.
a nihilistic barrage of sound and image that belongs somewhere between a Lars Von Trier Dogme film and the early work of Gregg Araki.
A cinematic challenge that eats slowly at the soul but never insults the audience or its characters.
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