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 their shoes and their talent as their only weapons of differentiation. Although nothing sticks out, and everything is meticulously arranged in both décor and outfits, the film nevertheless reveals the disorder that reigns at the age of adolescence.
Against a backdrop of sectarianism and a frantic quest for recognition, Club Zéro portrays this very special age, at an unnamed university. Mia Wasikowska brilliantly portrays 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.
Current themes of over-consumption,ecology and the questioning of our way of life are the foundations 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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