It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Mr. Moodysson made a flick here that has very little rhyme, but a lot of reason. No, wait...it has a lot of rhyme, but zero reason. No! It's...uh, there's a little bit from...hmmm.As soon as A Hole in My Heart began, I realized taking that little bit of Nyquil probably wasn't the greatest of ideas. But luckily, I'm a tough guy, and I managed to keep focus on Lukas's lil experiment. Because that's what this was kinda, an outlined experiment. Well, I think so anyways.For me, I split the movie into separate aspects. One ideal is for the three adults (the Dad, his friend and the porn actress) of the movie, and the other is for the son. With the three adults your shown immaturity, delusion, confusion, and just a whole wave of emotional problems. Not far away is the son; overly thoughtful, a shut-in, quiet...and simply appears the polar opposite to the three on the other side of the door. And whatever story this movie was trying to present, in my opinion, lies within comparing the two sides to another other, and hoping they would find a common ground. And even that was hard to do, as all the characters (even the son) were rather unlikable, and all relied on pity.Was the film intriguing? Yeah, I guess. Was it well directed? I thought so. Was it entertaining? Not really. Is there a deeper meaning than simply comparing the people to one another, and not trying to look at them as useless human beings? Maybe. But if you really want to do such a thing, I think you're already fighting an uphill battle.From my point of view there's not much to learn from this film, as it was mostly full of negative things. And I'm curious to know Lukas's point of the film. I would guess it was a very simple idea. I could easily say this film's underlying message is to get an education. But I could be dead wrong. Watch this flick if you like to ponder about movies afterwards. Don't if you don't.

Having loved 'Together' and admired, for the most part, 'Lilya 4-Ever' (as well as his short films), I was dreadfully disappointed with this new work from Moodyson. In an interview about 'A Hole On My Heart' Moodyson stated that he thought it was his best and most complex film, before saying that he didn't know what the film was supposed to be about, not offering any explanation other than 'it has many layers'. Such statements reveal entirely the reason behind the film's failure. Depsite Moodyson's assertion of complexity, there is simply nothing in this 90+ minute film that could not have been adequately communicated in a short. Simply juxtaposing unpleasant images of cosmetic surgery and action men figures with home-made pornography does not constitute a complex statement on anything. In fact the film is hopelessly meandering and one has the increasing feeling that it was 'discovered' in the editing room. I'm very interested in non-narrative film-making, and I don't need a 'story' to communicate events to me, but it is evident to me when there is a severe paucity of drive and ideas, and that feeling was evident throughout a viewing of this film. It concerns me that this film will be defended by people who feel that sitting through the unpleasant content constitutes some sort of test of intellectual rigour and that those who didn't like it are not prepared to 'face up' to the reality this film purports to present. In fact the simple truth is that this is an empty film, with a painful lack of understanding of how to dramatise ideas. I really hope Moodyson comes up with something better next time - I think his talents outstrip nonsense like this.

This was an interesting visual exercise from Moodysson. I don't know whether I have followed completely Moodysson's exposition on a set of broken lives in beautiful suburbia Scandinavian-style.It reminded me of early Dogme films, namely the breaking of all strings to do with conventional film-making... but with many shortcomings in the end! This appeared particularly true in the "acting" by those involved. Moodysson seemed to be on a mission to capture reality opting for an unscripted take on the script he had in his head. To my eyes it didn't work as it should have. I felt that a possibly interesting idea came very far from delivering an end product.As far as the story goes things are pretty simple. Abuse, abandonment, redemption, all come to mind. Despite the odd editing and Aphex-Twinsesque soundtrack, it all ends up following pretty common trails that have already been paved by modern-day's reality TV.I believe that Moodysson is a fantastic writer who was able to deliver similar directing results with F***ing Amal, Together and Lylia 4-Ever but in this particular case it didn't work. I still admire his courage and no-strings commitment to a project like this after his widely respected more conventional films of late.Watch it though. It's a good stimulus to a thought or two about how we all live today in this vast peninsula.

Having seen (and loved) both Lilya 4-Ever and Together in the same week, I decided to continue trawling through Lukas Moodysson's filmography with his latest offering, A Hole In My Heart. If I'm being completely honest, I've never been more disappointed by a film as much as this. It's not hard to see what Moodysson was trying here - set up a chaotic atmosphere with only a handful of characters, then turn things around by unveiling the raw emotion exhibited by these human beings - all on a DV camera. It was done so much better in Miike Takashi's Visitor Q. A Hole In My Heart just smacks of uncomfortable pretension. Had this been Moodysson's first film, I might have been a touch more lenient. However, this is the man who directed Lilya 4-Ever, one of the most disturbingly candid films available, and to go from that to this is just vexing.