Jessica Hausner'sClub Zero, starring Mia Wasikowska, was in competition in the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. This daring drama follows the story of Miss Novak, a teacher who disrupts eating habits at a private high school. In this tale of teenagers in search of authority and meaning, Jessica Hausner delivers a chilling fresco in which every scene is savored. Graphically and script-wise, the film excels, revealing all the director's ingenuity.
Club Zéro opens with a succession of balanced, symmetrical shots in an impersonal setting that deliberately erases all spatial references. The characters appear, identical to one another, with only their shoes and their talent to differentiate them. Although nothing sticks out, and everything is meticulously arranged in the décor as much as in the outfits, the film nevertheless reveals the disorder that reigns at the age of adolescence.
Against a backdrop of sectarianism and a frantic search for recognition, Club Zéro paints a portrait of this very special age, at a university whose name we don't even know. Mia Wasikowska brilliantly plays the chilling character of a nutritionist who introduces an innovative diet program, dubbed " Conscious Eating ", to her group of students, even to the point of autophagy. Here, teenagers are portrayed as misunderstood or even neglected by their families, embodying the stereotypes of bourgeois America, and find in Miss Novak an obvious benevolence in their eyes. While some are more reluctant to join this new program, their dilemma proves to be only temporary.
Today's themes of over-consumption,ecology and the questioning of our way of life form the basis of this drama, which also explores family ties - absent or superficial. Jessica Hausner 's film is halfway between those of Yórgos Lánthimos(The Lobster) and Ruben Östlund (Sans filtre). The soundtrack, by Markus Binder, perfectly punctuates the film's two (short) hours, during which there's no downtime. There's also a French touch, with Elsa Zylberstein, back after the brilliant Simone, and Mathieu Demy, son ofAgnès Varda.
In the end, Club Zéro comes across as a timely and necessary film, revealing with macabre irony the mechanisms of manipulation and questioning the viability of our lifestyles.
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