A Hole In My Heart

Labia reduction operations, emetophilia, bizarre oedipal frictions, open heart surgery, douching, anal anaesthesia, toy soldiers being inserted where no GI has any business to be (unless of course he’s running an Iraqi Prisoner of War camp) – it seems extremely unlikely that Mr. Moodyson’s fourth feature will make the Daily Mail’s compilation of best films this year, but A Hole In My Heart does confirm his rep as one of the most unpredictable transgressors around.

Set on a porn shoot with production values amateurish enough to make web-cam bedroom standards look like Cecil B. De Mille on a blank cheque budget, this endearingly malicious assault on the senses centres on low-rent deviant Rickard (Flinck) and his no-brow movie co-stars, Geko (Marianovic) and Tess (Brading). As their artistic merits and inhibitions dwindle, Rickard’s depressed teenage son (Almroth) plays with earthworms and watches from his lonely adjoining bedroom while daddy and friends do their best Salo impression for the cameras. No taboo or orifice remains unmolested.

Before, however, anyone starts getting moist at the prospect of some supremely sick Swedish porn, it should be noted that A Hole In The Heart leaves you with just that – a sordid, sinking hollow feeling – but only if you’ve been lucky enough not to emerge stupefied by the firestorm of revolting graphic inserts and disorientating audio asides. Naturally, coming from a filmmaker with an impeccably humanist CV (Lilya 4 Ever, Together), it’s not all gratuitous bombast, but a kind of nihilistic yowl about pornography, reality television and the David Beckham fixated End Of History.

Will have you praying for the soul of humanity and hoping that was just a dildo she put in there for days on end. That or feeling nauseous. Either way it’s a triumph.

98mins. Cert IFI members. Opens February 18th.