Epidemic (film) - Plot

Plot

The movie is divided into five days. On the first day the protagonists, screenwriters Lars (Lars Von Trier) and Niels (Niels Vørsel) lose the only copy of a movie’s script (Kommisæren Og Luderen, "The Policeman and the Whore," a reference to The Element of Crime). They begin to write a new script about an epidemic: the outbreak of a plague-like disease. The protagonist is a doctor, Mesmer, who, against the will of the Faculty of Medicine of an unknown city, goes to the countryside to help people. During the next days, the facts of the script join the real-life events in which a similar disease starts to spread. Lars and Niels go to Germany, where they meet a man (Udo Kier) who describes the bombing of Cologne during World War II. After the trip, Niels goes to a hospital where he undergoes a minor surgical procedure, and tells Lars to go to see Palle, a pathologist who is executing an autopsy to a man who has recently died of an unknown disease. The last day, Lars and Niels have a dinner with their producer, to whom they reveal the end of the movie, that Mesmer and his medical kit have spread the disease. The producer doesn’t like the short 12-page script, which has no violence, few deaths and no subplots (which are common in Danish cinema). After that a hypnotist and a woman arrive in the house, to “help” writing the script, but the woman is overpowered by the visions of the script which are becoming real. She commits suicide, then another woman who shares the house with Lars and Niels dies too, and Niels begins showing the signs of the disease.

In the movie there are some subplots like the choosing of the right wine and food for the dinner and the correspondence between Niels and a girl from Atlantic City.