Beautiful People

Beginning with a seemingly senseless fight in a bus that carries out onto the street and, eventually, the hospital where both assailants (a Serb and a Croat) end up, director Jasmin Dizdar's Beautiful People explores the pervasive nature of ethnic hate. Lots of cross-cutting among several disparate storylines reveals how strangers can affect one another, while reinforcing the notion that chaos runs through everyone's life (the point made in a less-than-subtle way when one woman who's been raped and initially wants an abortion finally ends up keeping her child, naming him “Chaos.”) One especially ironic subplot (actually, they're all subplots) involves a drug addict who accidentally falls asleep on an airport freight pallet and is parachuted into Bosnia as part of an airlift. Once there, he actually makes something of himself. Life is a war zone, the director seems to be saying--on a personal level as well as a societal one. A strong optional purchase. (T. Rich)