Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Kathrin Resetarits | ... | Manu |
Ursula Strauss | ... | Andrea, Manu's best friend | |
Georg Friedrich | ... | Andreas, Manu's husband | |
Marion Mitterhammer | ... | Gerlinde, Manu's sister | |
Martin Brambach | ... | Reini, Manu's brother | |
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Rupert L. Lehofer | ... | Lukas |
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Bellinda Akwa-Asare | ... | Sandra |
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Gabriela Schmoll | ... | Belinda, Sandra's Mother |
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Christian Ghera | ... | Heinrich |
Karl Fischer | ... | Karl | |
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Désirée Ourada | ... | Patricia |
Dominik Hartl | ... | Kai (as Dominik Hartel) | |
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Nicole Skala | ... | Gabi |
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Deborah Ten Brink | ... | Yvonne, Manu's daughter |
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Alfred Worel | ... | Josef |
A young Austrian survives the crash of a commercial airliner. Six years later, she's a clerk, a mother, happy. Then she dies in a car accident. Over the next year, we follow her daughter, who goes through various medical blood tests, her husband, her best friend who's been having an affair with her husband, her sister who trades sex for shelter, her brother and his hesitant friendship with an emotionally-locked clerk at a pharmacy, the clerk's lonely mother, an unpopular high-school student with bad skin, and the boy she may connect with, who was driving the car in the fatal crash. In happenstance are there patterns? In life is there meaning? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
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