FREE RADICALS aka BÖSE ZELLEN

Year: 2003
UK: NFT
Cast: Kathrin Resetarits, Ursula Strauss, Georg Friedrich, Marion Mitterhammer, Martin Brambach, Rupert L Lehofer, Bellinda Akwa-Asare, Gabriela Schmoll, Christian Ghera, Karl Fischer, Desiree Ourada, Dominik Hartel, Nicole Skala, Deborah Ten Brink, Alfred Worel, Elisabeth Engstler, Romana Helcmanovsky, Sabrina Pochop, Angela Kada, Niko Wlcek, David Frey, Jennifer Kramer, Sascha Ploner, Alexander Eßler, Karol Sibielak
Director: Barbara Albert
Countries: Austria / Germany / Switzerland
Language: German (English subtitles)
UK: 120 mins
UK Release Date: 3 September 2004 (Limited Release - London)
(in German)

Synopsis

The talented young Austrian writer/director Barbara Albert (NORTHERN SKIRTS) tackles an ambitious subject - chaos theory - and applies it to the daily lives of the interdependent inhabitants of a small Austrian town. Beginning her film with the now-infamous example of the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a tornado over the Gulf of Mexico, she's less interested in tracing causality than in showing how her characters hanker to identify it in their buffeted lives. With uncanny assurance she lets us see things - life, other people, fate especially - as seen by her various characters. They don't all see things the same way by any means. The inchoate nature of their various world-views could be said to be the film's subject, which gives it an energetic looseness and unpredictability. (There are marvellous sequences where characters lose themselves in music.) By no means an easy ride, FREE RADICALS brims with vital, memorably etched characters, and a potent sense that though life is perilous and fate can be cruel, joy, too, can be found where it is least expected.