Kino Kontrovers 3: A Hole in my Heart - DVD

Film: Rickard (Thorsten Flinck) seems completely at the end. His wife has left him and his son Eric (Björn Almroth) seems to completely despise him. His days, dominated by frustration and boredom, Rickard spends with his buddy Geko (Goran Marjanovic) playing video games, having petty conversations or shooting amateur porn with Geko's girlfriend Tess (Sanna Bråding). For Tess, shooting porn is a big dream, for which she has had her vagina specially reduced in size. And while things get harder and harder in the living room, Eric hides away in his dark room, ranting about the world, breeding worms or listening to dark music. Eventually, the men's sex games take on more and more violent overtones, and Tess flees the apartment, frightened and disgusted. But self-esteem and will to live are so low in the girl that she flees back into the gloomy microcosm. Only Eric seems to realize that Tess seems to be perishing here. But even he cannot persuade her to leave...

A Hole in my Heart is extremely heavy fare. The film is extremely exhausting at many moments, some of the images are downright repulsive, and the underlying atmosphere that dominates everything is one of bleakness that can hardly be topped. Director Lukas Moodysson confronts the viewer in an unsparing way with the deeply disturbed mental lives of his protagonists. In doing so, he shows shots in fast-cut images that, despite their sometimes extreme brevity, burn themselves deeply into the viewer's memory and thus make the film an intense, but not exactly pleasant experience. Of course, the question here is especially why anyone would want to do this to themselves. Why immerse yourself in the lives of four broken people who can't really win the viewer's sympathies?

The answer is quite clear: getting involved with a film like this, released for good reason in a series titled Kino Kontrovers, is a challenge you should consciously take on. If you don't like experimental art house films, if you find images showing, among other things, footage of female genital surgery easy on the stomach, however brief, or if you are easily dragged down by the psychological gravity of the subject matter, then you should definitely avoid A Hole in my Heart. For the film leaves a lasting impression, even if it may not be a positive one, or even a repulsive one. But if you enjoy cinematic challenges, if you appreciate experimental cinema that at moments feels more like a video installation and less like a feature film, if you like films that follow rocky but little-trodden paths, then you can confidently take on this intense psychogram.

Picture + Sound: The picture is very clean, with the many quick cuts making any weaknesses in detail that may exist barely noticeable. The sound is well mixed, with music and dialogue, as well as some sound effects, being well matched.

Extras: In addition to the booklet with a very interesting essay on the film, the DVD also has a short featurette (about 15 min.) and the trailer to offer. Not really mind-blowing, but since the booklet offers some interesting notes on the still very difficult film, there is still a satisfied: Good!

Conclusion: A Hole in my Heart is a difficult film. More of a punch in the gut, it's a disturbing collage of images that offers a sometimes shocking glimpse into the shattered soul lives of its protagonists. It's a film that is perfectly at home in the Kino Kontrovers series. The DVD is technically well implemented, the bonus material is clear, but especially the booklet provides interesting additional information, which is quite helpful for the discussion of the film

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp