A car crash causes the random intersection of various lives in this Austrian film by Barbara Albert. Manu (Kathrin Resetarits) survives a plane crash only to die eight years later on impact with a carload of teenagers. She leaves behind a spooky little daughter Yvonne (Deborah Ten Brink), a grieving husband (Georg Friedrich) who was having an affair with her best friend (Ursula Strauss), her neurotic younger sister (Marion Mitterhammer), a live-in whore for a one-legged old man, and her brother Reini (Martin Brambach)--a physics professor who ties it all together with lectures on fractals and chaos theory. Reini also bonds over fast food with the painfully shy daughter of a lovelorn hausfrau (Gabriela Schmoll). The best moments come from Desiree Oureda as the outcast, Ouija-board wielding schoolgirl who develops a bond with the boy whose bad driving made a quadriplegic of his girlfriend and killed Manu. There's no music score, but characters sing and listen to the radio a lot. The film's clinical examination of ugly middle-class sex (there's lots of rutting and grunting) and consumerism (much of the action occurs at a horrific shopping mall) bears comparison with the work of Lars Von Trier and other European New Wave satirists, but Albert also finds beauty in her drab locations, and poetry in the linking of random, overlapping events, making this also reminiscent of the best of early Robert Altman films.

THEATRICAL RELEASE: JULY 23, 2004 (LIMITED)

DVD Features:

Region [unknown]
Keep Case
Letterbox - 1.85
Additional Release Material:
Trailers
Making Of
Production Interviews: Barbar Albert - Director
Text/Photo Galleries:
Stills/Photos

Kathrin Resetarits: Actor, FREE RADICALS (2004)
Ursula Strauss: Actor, FREE RADICALS (2004)
Georg Friedrich: Actor, DOG DAYS (2002)
Marion Mitterhammer: Actor, FREE RADICALS (2004)
Deborah Ten Brink: Actor, FREE RADICALS (2004)
Gabriela Schmoll: Actor, FREE RADICALS (2004)
Desiree Ourada: Actor, FREE RADICALS (2004)

Barbara Albert: Director, FREE RADICALS (2004)

Martin Gschlacht: Producer, FREE RADICALS (2004)
Antonin Scoboda: Producer, FREE RADICALS (2004)

Barbara Albert: Director, FREE RADICALS (2004)