Review of A Hole in My Heart (2004)
There’s the father: a physically decaying closeted homosexual and/or the victim of child molestation at the hands of his own father. There’s the father’s younger friend and business partner: a friendly macho type who zones out from time to time, dreaming of outer space and falling back into real-world violent, professional misogyny. The father shoots porn in his own apartment. The friend stars alongside a reality TV reject who’s had her outer labia surgically altered to enhance her beauty. Finally, there’s the son, a disfigured kid who keeps his blinds drawn and a black noose hanging from the ceiling as the tape begins to roll outside his door. Four broken individuals stay together out of variations on hate, greed and self-destructive impulses.
Tough stuff. Imagine seeing extreme close-ups of messy open-heart and labial surgery cross-cut with sexual intercourse to illustrate the materialism of mainstream pornography. Wait, you don’t need to imagine it, there’s a movie where that happens!
I like the early choices of music: A Teens, Supernatural, that kind of vacuous pop. The concluding classical music undermines Moodysson’s didacticism. It’s blunt up to that point, but not von oben. I can’t help but think that an equally powerful film could have been made without all those devices seemingly designed to keep any remotely ordinary audience away.
References here: Pleasure (2021).