The events here take place in an ugly apartment complex in Vienna. But the exterior ugliness is nothing compared to the rotten people living there. We get to know three couples: a husband and his cheating wife, a very light skinned jealous blonde and her dark-skinned foreign boyfriend whom she makes believe she's pregnant, and a woman trying to break up with her violent husband. If this sounds like it would make for exciting drama, you'd disappointed. This is not a French or Italian movie. Instead we get to watch as these people go about being jerks and they do so rather silently. There isn't all that much dialogue here as the couples clearly don't understand each other and barely understand themselves. And the viewer quickly realizes that this movie will not go anywhere, hence, my reluctance to call them 3 "stories" as nothing really happens. Yes, there's a car crash that frames the entire movies at the beginning and end and given that someone dies in the crash, that opens up the possibility for things unraveling, settling. But that story isn't told here. We don't get to see the motivation for their actions either. The cheating wife, for instance, is engaging in what amounts a series of one night stands with the same man and even though their entire relationship centers on sex, their relationship is presented as if it is fulfilling some deep emotional need for her and yet the two rarely talk to each other. The lying girl, on the other hand, is surely willing to please her boyfriend, yet he cheats on her with an older woman for some reason, even though he seems to be thrilled to become a father. It will turn out that her jealousy is well founded because he is in fact cheating on her. The violent husband, who is also the funniest and most colorful character, is in such denial about their breakup, that episode is somewhat comical, as nothing the woman says can shake his conviction that they are supposed to be together because he loves her. The connections between the characters are somewhat forced and artificial. The cheater is a nurse, the liar is a clerk at a market where the nurse shops and runs into her often while smoking outside somewhere. The foreigner is cheating with the wife of the violent husband and will meet the nurse when his girl tries to commit suicide. Perhaps the one virtue of such a nihilistic movie is that it forces to viewer to seek meaning to fill the void and as such makes you ponder and try to get to the bottom of things or contemplate the possibilities. The DVD includes a great behind-the-scenes feature which is just that and nothing more. Unlike American movies where 10 minutes of behind the scenes is mixed with 20 minutes of movie scenes- as if watching the movie once weren't enough, this one is nothing but behind the scenes. Here you get to meet the director. And things become clearer. An ugly movie about ugly people can only be the product of an ugly man. And the writer/director is one ugly creepy little man. Surprisingly, there's even behind the scenes footage of the sex scenes. It's here of course that we learn all the little details and the meaning of each and what the director is up to. But that doesn't make the movie itself any more watchable. While these are all bad people doing bad things, it would seem that there are no victims, but there are children involved in 2 episodes and that does little to modify the people's behavior. The husband of the cheating wife also seems like an innocent victim here, although there's a scene of him watching his teen daughter for a long time as she dances in her room. That scene could be disturbing depending on how you interpret it, but fortunately, that is not developed.
