[1] It has a fragmented storyline as the title suggests, and chronicles several seemingly unrelated stories in parallel, but these separate narrative lines intersect in an incident at the end of the film.

A young Romanian boy sneaks across the border at night, wading through a swamp and hiding in the back of a truck.

A retired man sits at home watching TV, talking at great length to his daughter who is too busy to spend time with him.

The drama consists of varied characters in each storyline: a Romanian boy who immigrated illegally into Austria and lives on the streets of Vienna; a religious bank security worker; a lonely old man staring at a TV screen; a childless couple considering adoption; a frustrated student and so on.

Adam Bingham of Senses of Cinema wrote, "Formally and conceptually, the film is one of the most challenging narrative works of the 1990s.

"[2] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "an icy-cool study of violence both mediated and horribly real", concluding that "For Mr. Haneke, the point seems less that evil is commonplace than that we don’t engage with it as thinking, actively moral beings.

"[3] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".