Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’m pleased to see that people are writing in about HOLE IN MY HEART. Sounds psychotic. Check this out:
Hi Harry,
I’ve been reading your site for years now, although until today I haven’t had anything interesting to write in about. But now I bring you two reviews from the Toronto Film Festival, including a look at the controversial Hole in My Heart.
Hole in My Heart (2004, dir Lukas Moodysson, Swedish Language)
This film had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, having not even been shown in Sweden yet. I strongly believe that Hole in My Heart is worth seeing, but not if you just want to see how “extreme” it is. In my opinion, Lukas Moodysson has done himself a great disservice by including some excessive images and activities (some of which I don’t think I could bring myself to describe for you here). At its heart, this film is a family drama about a man who shoots pornography in his apartment, his son who wants no part of that lifestyle, and the two porn actors who are performing for the camera. It’s a good story and each of the four main characters is worthy of further exploration. But we don’t get the chance that we deserve to know and understand these characters because Moodysson is sometimes too busy trying to show us shots of genital surgery.
I’ve seen two other Moodysson films: Fucking Amal (aka Show Me Love) and Together. Both of those films were very character driven. I felt as though I understood the motivations of the major players. They were also very upbeat films, despite the fact that they dealt with some serious topics. I cannot say either of these things about Hole in My Heart. I feel that Moodysson wanted it to be character driven. Unfortunately, he just didn’t seem to understand that his audience wouldn’t see his characters as much as they would see and remember the explicit nature of some of their actions.
In the post-film Q&A, Moodysson said that almost all people are psychopaths because we choose to ignore so much of the suffering in the world. I believe he was trying to suggest that we tend to hole ourselves up in our own little sealed worlds, so the film takes place almost entirely within an almost claustrophobic little apartment. Moodysson also said that he interviewed many people from the porn industry while preparing for this film. He said that for many of them, they were much happier after getting into the porn industry than they had before because they had always felt like shunned outsiders. And indeed, at one point the young female character (played by Sanna Brading) returns to the apartment after having fled it with a mixture of terror and disgust. Her porn accomplices are her family and they are ultimately the source of whatever happiness she has in life.
There are some strong themes and some interesting ideas present in this film. It isn’t just trash. But as I said, Moodysson eclipses them because he puts in a bunch of material that is excessive and almost certainly not necessary. As to the issue of whether or not Hole in My Heart will ever make it into even an art house release in North America, I sincerely doubt that will happen. It just has too much material that is degrading to the human condition. It may seem paradoxical to say that and then to say that I urge people to see it, yet that is what I am going to do. I think it should be seen by people who are interested in film and especially by filmmakers. I feel it is a fine example of an interesting story than could have been so much better if it had just been done somewhat differently. There are aspects of this film to be praised, and there are definitely some lessons to be learned from Moodysson’s mistakes.
Unconscious (2004, dir JoaqÃun Oristrell, Spanish Language)
Unconscious is a comedy/mystery that I recommend without reservation. Perhaps it just fit really well with my particular sense of humour, but I laughed almost constantly throughout the screening. When it came to the plot point that reveals why the film is called Unconscious, I laughed even harder.
This film, which was seen outside of Spain for the first time at the Toronto Film Festival, is a very creative story set in Spain in 1913. The main characters are highly respected doctors, their wives, and the various other personalities who played roles in the lives of wealthy Spaniards at that time. There is no preamble before the main characters delve right into a mystery involving the disappearance of one of the doctors. The plot, which I will not spoil for you here, moves on to focus mainly on the subsequent activities of the missing man’s wife and her brother-in-law, who also happens to be her husband’s best friend.
Despite my best efforts, I can’t think of anything negative to say about Unconscious. There is no sense of waiting for the story to get rolling. It just grabs you from the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end. The talented and beautiful Leonor Watling, who didn’t get to say much in Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk to Her, gets to be much more talkative here and is very funny in the lead female role. She never goes over the top, but she demonstrates a firm grasp of comedic timing. Luis Tosar, who plays the male lead, shows great promise in his first comedic performance in a film. Both Tosar and JoaqÃun Oristrell (the director) did a Q&A after the film in which they gave the audience a live taste of the same sort of lightly humorous approach that they must have had on the set. I really hope that this film finds a distributor for an art house run in North America.
I hope this is helpful to you, Harry. If you use any of this on your site, please call me “Northern Lights.”
Way to go, man. Best dissection yet that I’ve seen for HOLE IN MY HEART, which opens next weekend in Sweden.
"Moriarty" out.
