Club Zero emerges as an “appetite-suppressing” movie at Cannes, a bold assessment that Ruben Östlund, the president of the jury, would not refute. This appraisal stems from the film’s opening scene of explicit regurgitation.
The opening scene of the feature-length film Club Zero proves to be more nauseating than last year’s interminable offering by the Swede on the big screen in Triangle of Sadness, which clinched the Palme d’Or. However, director Jessica Hausner maintains that the intention of this shot is not to induce discomfort but to mimic prevailing societal norms.
Photo credit : Julie Sebadelha / AFP
“When, at a dinner, an individual refrains from eating, the rest feel either guilt-ridden or affronted. This demonstrates how stringent and vital food rules are within society,” the director articulates. The challenging scene, difficult to digest, “does not exist to disconcert people. It is meant to illustrate how radicalization operates,” she adds.
The entirety of the feature-length film condemns indoctrination and sectarianism while simultaneously satirizing contemporary societal neuroses, educational shortcomings in affluent families, inertia towards climate change, and the obsession with “healthy eating.”
Club Zero unfolds within a prestigious educational institution in an unidentified European country. It orbits around a group of adolescents under the influence of Mrs. Novak, portrayed by Mia Wasikowska, a teacher advocating “conscious eating,” to the point of entirely abstaining from food and endangering the lives of all the students. “At times, I compare myself to someone arriving from another planet, observing us, and I imagine what this individual might think,” the Austrian director muses.
Photo credit : Julie Sebadelha / AFP
Beyond eating disorders and cult-like aberrations, the film portrays the anxieties of the younger generations confronted with climate change and inequalities. “I persistently believe that, were I a teenager now, I would be excessively anxious about the world we are inheriting,” Mia Wasikowska confessed. “I found it moving that these children partake in this course because they are concerned about the planet. Many of them aspire to consume less meat and become more conscious. That’s the beauty inherent in youth. But all of this becomes corrupted, influenced.”
To prepare for the film, Jessica Hausner and the actress known for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland conducted research on cults and sects. For the director, the teacher needed to be genuine in her beliefs, rather than a manipulator. “She’s a true believer and she genuinely believes she’s doing what’s right,” Wasikowska depicted. The children and Mrs. Novak “begin to believe in something that we would ordinarily regard as false and mad. It is exceedingly challenging to accept that people genuinely believe in devastating or destructive ideas,” Jessica Hausner continued.
Photo credit : Julie Sebadelha / AFP
Her last feature-length film, Little Joe, competed at Cannes in 2019 and earned actress Emily Beecham a performance award. Like this film, Club Zero involves a great deal of work on colors and the geometry of the sets. “I do not set films in a specific era or place. I strive to create an artificial visual style,” the director emphasized, expressing that she finds naturalism “tedious.”
