Moodysson, Ardenne, Derrida: Reading genre, extremity and controversy through the art–pornography of A Hole in My Heart

Labelled as ‘new extreme’, Ett hål i mitt hjärta (A Hole in My Heart) (Moodysson, 2004) controversially straddles the boundaries of art and pornography, challenging the supposed eroticism of pornography with disgusting re-enactments and rethinkings of the violence of pornography. It is transgressive but not excessively so; it is recognizably both artistic and pornographic but hardly representative of either genre. In this article, I show that Paul Ardenne’s theory of extremity is a good means for understanding the play with boundaries that takes place in A Hole in My Heart as well as in Jacques Derrida’s analysis of genre labels. Through an analysis of A Hole in My Heart’s relation to art and pornography, I propose an account that allows for multiple permutations of genre affiliation and suggest that it could advance thinking about new extreme films and genre more broadly.