A determined medical student uncovers shady goings on during a prestigious summer anatomy course in this German thriller. When Paula Henning (
Run Lola Run's
Franka Potente) learns that she's been accepted to a highly competitive internship at a Heidelberg research institution, she's ecstatic. The daughter of a simple family doctor, she prefers to model herself after her terminally ill grandfather, who was once dean of the same Heidelberg university. Stern lecturer Prof. Grombek (Traugott Buhre) promises that half the students won't be around when the course ends; his prediction turns out to be true, but it's not because of the brutal exams. It seems that a group of renegade doctors is performing dissections on unwilling, still-living victims, which helps explain the artful laboratory in which plasticized human remains are lovingly displayed. Paula stumbles onto this plot when a recent acquaintance turns up on her dissection table, his blood the consistency of rubber. Studious to the extreme, Paula investigates his death with scientific determination -- despite the flirtations of handsome fellow student Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) and the feel-good urgings of Gretchen (
Anna Loos), her sexually promiscuous but utterly brilliant roommate. Just as Paula is preparing to expose the existence of the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a Nazi-affiliated group of medical malcontents, Gretchen falls prey to their extreme methods. Soon Paula, too, is in danger of becoming just another addition to the display case. Extremely popular in its native country,
Anatomie was dubbed into English for American release under the title Anatomy. A sequel was in production as of 2002. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide