Free Radicals

Clever and ingenious film from Austria in which a series of diverse characters are pursued by fate. Or how grand themes can be presented with treacherous lightness.

This is not the first film in which a series of protagonists all have their own narrative line and it will not be the last, but the film by Barbara Albert is certainly among the very best in the genre. Böse Zellen is not free of ambitions. The various story lines are ingeniously interwoven with each other while in the drama a special degree of distance is sought, and philosophical and even supernatural themes are incorporated into the film in a wonderfully light-hearted way. The well-known theory that every minor event can be the catalyst for a series of other events, which can snowball and have a catastrophic effect much later and much further afield (the single beat of the wing of a butterfly here can cause a hurricane in China) is presented in a light-hearted way. The metaphorical butterfly also appears on screen in reality, as if Albert wants to say that it may look very serious, but it’s not really that bad at all. And that is what it is. The tone of the film betrays a very personal kind of dry humour. It is curious (and very controversial in a film that is, apart from that, so realistic) that several characters, after their fateful death (because fate is the motor of the film) continue to influence the story. With this film, Albert throws all her talent and intelligence in the balance and that, on its own, is fascinating to see. –IFFR