Free Radicals 2003

     A young Austrian survives the crash of a commercial airliner.  Six years later, she's a clerk, a mother and happy.  Then, she dies in a car accident.  Over the next year, we follow her daughter.  She goes through various medical blood tests.  Her husband is having an affair with her best friend.  Her sister trades sex for shelter.  Her brother is in a hesitant friendship with an emotionally-locked clerk at a pharmacy.  The clerk has a lonely mother.  There is an unpopular high-school student with bad skin.  There is at boy she may connect with but he was driving the car in the fatal crash.  In happenstance are there patterns?  In life there is meaning?

     The film opens with a butterfly flapping its wings, causing a tropical thunderstorm to erupt over Brazil.  This is known as a butterfly effect.  This is a movie about many things.  Chaos, coincidence and circumstance are some of the topics.  Death, loss and desperation are other topics.  In our society of commerce and capitalism the places selected for the shootings are shopping malls, fast food restaurants, pedestrian areas and supermarkets.

     The characters in this movie, while coming from different backgrounds have one thing in common, they are lonely.  Most are also sad and unbearably desperate.  They all fight for someone or something, even though they don't know what it is they want?  Somehow they find the strength to overcome this loneliness and  desperation.  They go on and some of them even struggle hard enough to find happiness.  If you are interested in the lives of seven depressed and unhappy people, this is the film for you??  Maybe you could go into therapy after viewing??

 
     Böse Zellen is in a class of his own where realism is concerned. Seldom before have people been depicted so authentically 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 in that way they can go on with their lives.  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)

120 min, Drama directed and written by Barbara Albert with Kathrin Resetarits, Ursula Strauss, Georg Friedrich, Marion Mitterhammer, Martin Brambach, Rupert L. Lehofer, Bellinda Akwa-Asare, Gabriela Schmoll, Christian Ghera, Karl Fischer, Desiree Ourada, Nicole Skala.

Note:  6.3* out of 10* with 508 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes 86% with 7 reviews 59% audience score with 100+ ratings, Amazon 3* out of 5* with 13 reviews, Slant Magazine 1* out of 4* Ed Gonzalez, Letterboxd 3.1* out of 5*.