A Hole in My Heart (2004)

This fourth feature from Swedish wunderkind Lukas Moodysson may seem to refute the humanism of his earlier work. But really, A Hole in My Heart celebrates the same values as Show Me Love, Together, and Lilya 4-Ever -- by depicting their dark flip side. Once again, circumstance forces strangers to forge an unlikely family unit. Once again, a forlorn adolescent sees through the injustices of the adult world. And once again, young people yearn to overcome the emotional gulf that separates them. Yet this time around, Moodysson's characters fail to connect in any meaningful way, yielding nothing but anarchy and infantile wallowing. To portray this failure, the filmmaker employs an arsenal of distancing effects. From its low-fi, handheld camerawork and glitchy, white-noise soundtrack to the grotesque atrocities in which its characters indulge, the film almost dares viewers to keep watching. The semi-explicit sex is willfully non-erotic. The cutaway shots of vaginal surgery and copulating dolls provide constant disorientation. The threat of violence lends a dull tension to even the most deliberately banal dialogue. Pretentious? Yes, but also effective. It's hard to imagine anyone loving a film so defiantly ugly, but it's not hard to imagine avant-garde cineasts admiring it. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide