WELLNESS

At first sight, the travelling salesman Thomas Lindsey is the most ordinary man in the whole world. He tries to make the best of his cheerless existence and even seems to believe in the sales pattern, with which he tries to get money from naive people in the American backwoods. Less usual is that, despite knowing better, he continues to pursue a sales campaign for the fake product «Wellness», an obvious pyramid construction, to the last. Most unusual is his hobby, or rather obsession: collecting wasps' nests. When Lindsey sees his mission of working his way up to some kind of wealth thanks to the hot-air balloon of «Wellness» doomed to failure, he succumbs like a beaten dog to everything that happens to him.
Wellness is a really unpolished low-budget film. The shooting took place in January 2006 in the town of Warren, Pennsylvania. The inhabitants of Warren, none of them professional actors, played almost all the roles. The film is not a documentary, but was shot as one. And that provides an unusually realistic effect. (Gertjan Zuilhof)