Slumming

Rich slacker Sebastian’s favourite sport is slumming in Vienna’s seedy bars in search of quirky characters to toy with. He also likes seducing women over the internet with elaborate stories. His romance with Pia is threatened when she becomes angry about Sebastian’s latest act of flippant cruelty: he and and his flatmate Alex picked up an unconscious drunk off the street and dumped him in the wintry Czech countryside without any ID., A privileged young prankster with a cruel streak sends an alcoholic poet on a redemptive quest to find his way back home in director Michael Glawogger’s semi-existential road drama. Sebastian (August Diehl) is a well-to-do slacker who has crafted his skill for slumming into something of an art form. Along with his flatmate Alex (Michael Ostrowski), Sebastian frequently arranges meetings with various women in dive bars throughout Vienna, only to photograph them surreptitiously under the table and use the resulting pictures as an endless source of amusement. As his already mean tricks begin to turn outright malicious, Sebastian finds the once-willing Alex growing increasingly uncomfortable with their “harmless” pastime. Kallman (Paulus Manker) is a troubled alcoholic who sells his poems on the street in order to stay inebriated. When Sebastian and Alex discover an unconscious Kallman sleeping off his latest round of drinks on a train station bench, they quickly spirit the clueless drunk into their car and across the Czech border where he is casually dumped without identification in a remote village. Subsequently enamored by restless local teacher Pia (Pia Hierzegger), Sebastian inadvertently revolts the kindly educator by jovially revealing the details of his latest practical joke. As a determined Pia sets out to locate the ailing alcoholic and safely bring him back home, Kallman attempts to recount just how he ended up so far away from Vienna as he navigates a strange and unfamiliar landscape.