Writer/director Lukas Moodysson's A Hole In My Heart is a cinematic sucker punch to the senses – I first saw this film over a year ago, near the end of a long day at the annual South by Southwest film festival (there were several walk-outs and I fought the urge to do so myself) and I can still vividly recall scenes, despite having seen dozens and dozens of movies since. This is a work that truly lingers, a ugly, unforgettable piece of viscerally angry cinema that thoroughly disturbed and nauseated me, eliciting a reaction I haven't felt since Gaspar Noe's brutal, extended rape sequence in Irreversible. A Hole In My Heart is strong, unrelenting stuff, so overpowering that Moodysson's pointed commentary is nearly lost amid the graphic sexuality and spillage of innumerable bodily fluids.

Relying upon the barest semblance of a plot – disaffected and disfigured teen Eric (Bjorn Almroth) spouts elliptical statements to a night vision camera in his father Rickard's (Thorsten Flinck) Swedish apartment, which could charitably be described as run-down while in the living room, Eric's father, along with Tess (Sanna Brading) and Geko (Goran Marjanovic), is filming an amateur porn flick, taking the occasional break to gorge on food and drink – Moodysson intercuts his story with the too-real-to-be-staged sex scenes and sequences that graphically depict labia reconstruction as well as brief interludes where explicit sexual acts are played out with dolls, rather than people. The nadir comes when one character vomits into the mouth of another, but that's preceded by a litany of gutwrenching behavior, including an orgy of food, talk of sexual abuse, that aforementioned reconstructive surgery, Eric's deformed hand and overall creepiness (he fetches his father a drink of water from the toilet) – you name it, Moodysson works it in and that's not even mentioning the queasy bursts of high frequency noise that punctuate the soundtrack at random intervals.

Since, to this point, I've made A Hole In My Heart sound like an exercise in masochism, let me explain why it's even worth spending time with Moodysson's oblique damnation of reality television, nihilistic morality tale and extreme dissection of a very dysfunctional family unit: it pales in comparison, but Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers was a likewise over-the-top film that used disturbingly graphic visuals to make its point - disturbing and perhaps unnecessary certainly, but not all art is meant to soothe and tranquilize. By its nature, the more outre works of art can shock and provoke, meaning to jar viewers into thinking about seemingly mundane topics (in this case, reality TV and the morality of porn). Moodysson's previous films – Fucking Amal or Lilya 4-Ever – aren't exactly walks in the park either, marking this incendiary auteur as a man more than comfortable eliciting horrified gasps from more than a few audience members. A Hole In My Heart is by far, in my experience, the most unrelentingly visceral film I've ever seen, but its impression is indelible – you're left with a hollow, sad feeling at the film's conclusion, unexpectedly moved by the plight of the characters populating Moodysson's world. It's an impossible film to love and perhaps even more difficult to recommend, but for those who can stomach Moodysson's blistering worldview, A Hole In My Heart will burrow deep into your subconscious and linger uneasily there.

The Video:

A Hole In My Heart is presented in a mostly clean 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer – shot on digital video, there are instances of noise and contrast, but it's inherent in the source material, rather than a fault of the transfer. Overall, flesh tones are accurate and warm, with solid black levels and no edge enhancement.

A film that would actually be more unbearable with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, Netflix has mercy on viewers and only offers a Dolby 2.0 stereo track in the native Swedish. Crisp and clear with no drop-out or distortion (other than what Moodysson deliberately distorts), this is one active mix that thankfully is relegated to the front speakers. Optional English subtitles are also included.

Zip, zero, nada – there's not a single bonus feature to be found. On top of that, there's not even a keepcase, as this film is part of the "Netflix First" series.

A Hole In My Heart is a gripping, brutally memorable film that traffics in some of the uglier acts ever committed to celluloid – writer/director Lukas Moodysson fashions a wrenching, bilious experience that fuses angry commentary upon reality TV with viscerally explicit acts of sexuality. It's a tricky film to recommend, but I feel it's at least worth a cursory spin for the cinematically adventurous. Recommended.