Die Viertelliterklasse (2005)

The first part of the film deals with the present-day lives of four alcoholics in different circumstances, told in four consecutive segments. The characters—Mr. Frustration, Mr. Fear, Mr. Stress, and Mr. Anger—are named after their defining traits. The viewer gets a glimpse of the four main characters’ daily lives, accompanied by the voice-over of the person concerned in each segment. All four, who differ completely in their manner, speech, and appearance, are played by Roland Düringer: Mr. Frustration, the warehouse worker who is always drinking beer; Mr. Fear, an actor who has gone astray; Mr. Anger, an irate mobile-phone buyer; and Mr. Stress, the company owner for whom time is money. After the four characters have been introduced, their stories gradually come together. It turns out that Mr. Frustration is a warehouse worker for Mr. Stress. Mr. Stress, in turn, hires Mr. Fear as the star guest for his company Christmas party. Mr. Anger eventually ends up at Mr. Stress’s company too, since it is responsible for his mobile phone never working the way he wants it to. As the Christmas party goes on, everything begins to spiral out of control because of excessive alcohol consumption. While Mr. Frustration unashamedly drinks one beer after another, Mr. Stress enjoys one glass of whisky after another in his office. Mr. Fear always carries his alcohol disguised in medicine bottles, and Mr. Anger spends hours at his regular bar every evening—but also repeatedly reaches for a drink at home. As the characters become increasingly intoxicated, events grow ever more mysterious. At one point during the evening, Mr. Frustration has a vision: his son Kevin (Samuel Kalakatroni), who is also at the Christmas party because his mother is unavailable, suddenly appears visibly a few years older in every scene, until he falls off a bar stool while drunk. A little later, his mother wheels him out of the building. It is said that “the day after tomorrow, thirteen years from now,” after a visit to a nightclub, he will roll over several times in a car and end up in a wheelchair. Mr. Stress’s whisky cabinet is just as mysterious: every time it is opened, it contains different drinks—and fewer and fewer of them. Mr. Anger’s life remains mysterious as well. When Mr. Fear, now heavily intoxicated, has drunk away his nervousness and is called onto the stage by the equally drunk and embarrassing company boss, Mr. Anger raises a handgun and says decisively, “Move in.” A police special-operations unit storms the premises and puts an end to the “illegal alcohol party.” The film now seems to end. The words “Mr. Anger’s Revenge” appear on screen, followed by the actors’ names. But then it continues. Mr. Fear does give his reading after all, and his drunken performance becomes a source of general amusement—though he takes it for great enthusiasm. After finishing his reading, Mr. Fear believes he has attracted the interest of the secretary, Sybille (Eva Billisich). Mr. Stress, who sat beside her in the audience, thinks the same, as does Mr. Frustration, the warehouse worker. Each man now tells, from his own point of view, how he intends to win Sybille’s affections. In the end, the film lets each of them go home alone with her. But in every case, the date with one of the drunk men ends with Sybille suffering a serious accident, after which she is seen on an operating table. Throughout the film, brief glimpses of an unidentified person undergoing surgery have been shown repeatedly. The viewer wonders what will happen and who the person on the operating table is. But the narrative perspective shifts again. This time, Sybille tells her version of the dates. In her account, each one ends with her rejecting the drunken suitor’s embarrassing advances. Yet in Sybille’s version, too, every date ends with a terrible accident. After Mr. Frustration is turned down, he impulsively pushes Sybille down the stairs; after Mr. Fear is rejected, he angrily hits her over the head with a glass bottle. Only after Mr. Stress is rejected does nothing happen at first. The friendly Indian taxi driver—who has been the driver on every one of the many taxi rides so far—escorts Sybille to her front door, hopefully. When she does not invite him in, he politely says goodbye and then, distracted, falls down the stairs outside the house. He seems not to have been seriously hurt and gets back up, but he is the one who is operated on in hospital. It turns out that he has suffered a collarbone injury, which is to be treated in a routine operation to prevent something worse in the future. But complications arise during the operation. One of the surgeons has hooked up the wrong IV. By the time the other doctors notice, it is too late to take countermeasures. The taxi driver dies. The surgeon responsible is revealed to be Mr. Anger. Before the operation, which took place at around 6:30 in the morning, he had been at his regular bar until half past two, drinking himself drunk. The friendly taxi driver’s ghost now accompanies him on his way home and tells him that he is not angry about having died because of an unnecessary mistake, since he is Hindu and believes in reincarnation. He goes on to muse that perhaps he will be reborn as an animal—perhaps as a big cat. By now, Mr. Anger has arrived home and steps onto the balcony of his apartment on an upper floor of a residential building. He stares ahead without joy and drops a bottle he had just been holding. The camera pans across the city of Vienna until it reaches Sybille’s roof terrace. The film ends when a cat suddenly appears and Sybille joyfully takes it in.