A Hole in My Heart

Lukas Moodysson has never looked blithely past his characters’ capacity for cruelty, violence or stupidity, but the phrase ‘feel-good’ has accurately attached itself to the films that made the Swedish director’s name, ‘Show Me Love’ (aka ‘Fucking Amal’, 1998) and ‘Together’ (2000). Even the gruelling ‘Lilya 4-ever’ (2002), which marked a dizzying turn away from the wry benevolence of the first two movies, clung to a Christian vision of redemption in death. Moodysson has previously declared in these pages that he only wants to make hopeful films. His latest finally reneges on that promise.

‘A Hole in My Heart’ bunks down in a rathole flat with a slimeball amateur pornographer, his pair of dumbshit stars, and the so-called director’s appalled son, an introvert with bad skin and a malformed arm who hides in his room listening to paint-peeling industrial sludge. The longer all four remain locked indoors, the more their remaining inhibitions fall away as Moodysson piles provocation upon provocation. (The putative money shot may test many viewers’ gag reflexes.)

The result is a dispiriting mess, a vicious, room-thrashing tantrum of rage and despair. The titular cavity stands for the cunt of the world – raped, surgically modified, worn and torn and stinking – and for the void in the twenty-first-century soul, a gluttonous emptiness screaming to be fed with bad sex, bad food, bad reality TV. This is not a cynical film – if it were, the sex would be more titillating, the gross-outs jokier. The world is a toilet, nobody’s arguing. But it’s not enough to be right. Moodysson’s just shovelling shit against the shit.