A Hole In My Heart - worth walking out of?

[JussiK]

Lukas Moodysson's film was reported of being confrontational and harrowing and extreme in every department, making audiences leave theatres in droves. After the promising Lilja film I for one was disappointed - there was nothing there in the Hole we haven't seen before. The reality tv show approach got tiresome after 20 minutes and the film is long, very very long. Trimmed and condensed into a 75 minute excercise in relentless grim ugliness the film might have worked but in it's present form it's simply boring. The premise has 2 slobs and a slut in a filthy flat attempting to make home porno videos, while a mildly retarded goth teenager raises worms in his room, unable to communicate as usual. The objective seems to be to bring attention to the corruptiveness of commercial sex, bad tv, consumerism, inability to communicate etc but in the best tradition of this kind of stuff the film only wallows in the subjects it feebly tries to condemn. Which would be great of course but in the Hole the excesses are not that shocking really, Dusan Makavejev's "Sweet Movie" already contained all of the transgressive details 30 years ago. The Otto Muhl-Wiennese aktivist type orgies with the "infamous" puking scene - Dusan brought all that to arthouse screens and didn't his film play in many mainstream cinemas as well? Also, the open heart surgery footage spliced in with naturalistic close ups of sex action - old news. The barbie dolls - another cliche done to death. Lars von Trier school camerawork and lighting - give us a break. Still, one has to see it I suppose, to be able to comment on something apparently controversial. Be prepared to be bored, though.