Free radicals

Parallel stories about various people in recovering process from a car accident are interwoven into one picture. The director has craftsmanship to incorporate different styles of genre films, such as horror, coming-of-age, and arthouse-erotica. The influence from several European melodrama giants, namely Fassbinder and Almodovar, also permeates on the screen. The rare feeling, which only occurs when I witness the moment of a new talent's emergence, caught me while I was watching this film at New York Film Festival 2003.

The screenplay is questionable; the plane crash at the beginning is barely related to the rest of the whole film. The director's explanation in Q&A session at the Festival, that the crash indicates chaos, irony and unpredictability of life in the relation to the entire story, doesn't convince me enough. Also, a bundle of absolutely separate stories, which don't interact with each other, may look dated in the future, though it is admittedly faddish at this moment.

Several choices of music, such as Take On Me and San Francisco, are so personal that the director's feeling may not be conveyed to the audience.

Overall, this is an unpolished but young and energetic film, which shows the director's promising future.

"Free Radicals" is a stark, slow-moving meditation on the randomness of life. Matching style to theme, this Austrian film relates a half dozen or so barely connected stories, all of which deal with the part fate and luck play in determining the direction of our lives. In some cases, the characters are the victims of accidents or illness, while in others they becomes prisoners of their own needs and desires. In all the cases, however, the characters live a drab, loveless existence, filled with unfulfilled dreams and loneliness.

Although the film begins with an interesting premise, the overall effect is so off-putting and depressing that we really can't enjoy the movie on anything but the most purely intellectual level. The people here just seem so miserable and unhappy that we want to get away from them as quickly as possible and head back to our own lives, imperfect though they might be. Perhaps by including so many characters, the film dilutes its focus, making it hard for us to fully identify with any one person and make us care about his or her fate. Despite good acting, this crazy quilt approach turns the movie into more of a clinical exercise than a deeper involving human drama, and lends it an air of greater pretentiousness than it might otherwise have had.

Enter the world of "Free Radicals" if you must, but you might want to take some Prozac along with you to help get you through it.

This Austrian movie has reached Sweden recently. It's the "Short Cuts" concept again, but that form seems to inspire script writers and directors to great achievements.

This is about the post consuming area. The phase when everybody seems to accept the society they are living in without protest. But typical for that area is the frustration which finds it way otherwise.

Because everybody is unhappy here. Whatever their goals are, friendship, love, a dead mother, everything is a disappointment. Nothing can be reached. And the point is that nothing is their own fault. The people are not blamed and that's hopeful and maybe a prediction of what is to follow after the consumerism era is over.

The film opens with a butterfly flapping its wings, causing a tropical thunderstorm to erupt over brasil.

Böse Zellen is a movie about many things. Chaos, coincidence and circumstance is one of its topics. Death, loss and desperation is another. Side blows are dealt out to our society of commerce and capitalism in the places selected for the shooting (shopping malls, a fast food restaurant, pedestrian areas, supermarkets).

The characters in this movie, while coming from different backgrounds, have a thing in common, they are lonely. Most are also sad and unbearably desperate. They all fight for someone or something, even though they do now know what it is they want. But somehow they find the strength to overcome this loneliness, the desperation and go on, and some of them even struggle hard enough to find happiness.

Seeing the movie in a theater here in Austria made me feel uneasy. It is this way with most austrian films I see. Seeing my fellow countrymen on the movie screen makes me ashamed for them. I think I even know the reason why, it is probably because austrian filmmakers have a tendency towards realism in portraying everyday lives. I have been so brainwashed with perfect Hollywood people and their perfect lives it startles me to see real people being portrayed in a movie. Böse Zellen is a class of its own where realism is concerned. Seldom before I have seen people depicted so authentic in the way they go about their everyday lives. Its also an incredibly sad movie, but its not going to make audiences cry because it is sad in a casual way. The characters have accepted what is happening to and around them and that way they can go on with their lives.

9 out of 10

Böse Zellen is by far the best Austrian movie released in 2003! Barbara Albert definitely is a very talented young director who manages to entertain, teach and portray our society in a really touching movie (without being pathetic!). The actors are doing a good job (especially Ursula Strauss and Kathrin Resetarits). Go see it!!!