Wednesday, September 22, 2004

J. Hoberman in the Village Voice offers this tantalizing note on Lukas Moodyson's new film A Hole in My Heart: "From the opening strobe burst of pocky-looking naked people through the mega-close-ups of labial surgery to the climactic food fight, the Swedish director's fourth feature is a calculated barf bomb that makes Makavejev's once scandalous Sweet Movie seem a model of sweet reason."

Once scandalous? Sweet Movie may be 30 years old, but I daresay it can still blow your mind. It has raw sex, Carol Laure wallowing naked in chocolate, lots of pissing, shitting, and puking, and there's one extended scene that comes just within a hair's breadth of child porn. It's one of the very few films where you think you just may be watching the work of a certifiable lunatic. A real shocker in its day -- among the two or three people that saw it -- so any movie that makes it look quaint has my guaranteed and somewhat queasy interest.

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