Shot under extreme secrecy and set in a dingy suburban apartment, the film features shocking and unsettling images. Moodysson focuses on Rickard and his painfully shy son Eric, who spends most of his days holed up in his room, listening to abrasive industrial music, presumably in an attempt to drown out what’s going on in the rest of the apartment. His father, an amateur pornographer, is shooting his latest opus with a friend Geko and a young woman named Tess. As the trio gets drunk and more impressed with themselves (they seem to think they’re celebrities by virtue of being involved with this tawdry effort) they lose what little inhibitions the had – and their behavior grows more and more disturbing. In some ways, the film suggests the writings of the Marquis the Sade – especially in its emphasis on the bedlam that erupts when social codes are abandoned entirely. It may be even more perturbing than the Sade, since a sense of ritual and class are virtually non-existent here. Moodysson’s working class characters are completely unaware of history. About the only thing they’re familiar with is pop psychology, cosmetic surgery and tabloid journalism.
