A group of impressionable high schoolers fall under the bewitching spell of a charismatic teacher with extreme ideas about food in Club Zero, the latest Cannes competition contender from Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner. A minor-key semi-thriller with a bright fairy-tale look, this decidedly strange teens-in-trouble movie is Hausner’s second English-language feature after her quirky botanical sci-fi puzzler Little Joe (2019), which also premiered in Cannes competition. Both films share some stylistic crossover in their impeccably composed visuals, vivid colour schemes, and oddly blank tone. Beautifully shot and packaged, but lacking in bite, this is a light snack of a film that should have been a feast. It will have more festival mileage after Cannes, but fairly limited art-house appeal thereafter.
Shaming, peer pressure, self-loathing, eating disorders, addictions and other food anxieties that affect adolescents – teenage girls especially – should translate to pretty intense dramatic material. Indeed, recent films including Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016), Ruth Paxton’s A Banquet (2021) and Samantha Aldana’s Shapeless (2021) have given these real-life body-horror issues a potent genre-friendly twist. Hausner pitches Club Zero as a cautionary tale about idealistic teens being lured into harm’s way, but her low-voltage treatment of these themes robs them of menace of mystery, despite some promisingly dark plot twists. Even an inventively nasty scene featuring vomit, designed to disgust, feels strangely tasteful.
Club Zero takes place at a strikingly modernist private school for children of elite, wealthy parents. The vaguely defined European location is purposely vague, but Hausner filmed in both Austria and Britain, and the cast share a range of accents. A gang of idealistic students led by Ragna (Florence Barker), Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt), Fred (Luke Barker) and Ben (Samuel D Anderson) become eager disciples to new teacher Miss Novak (a serenely sinister Mia Wasikowska), who runs a class on “conscious eating”, a kind of nutritional mindfulness. Miss Novak encourages the kids to eat smaller and more carefully considered portions, punctuated by fasting to promote autophagy, the process by which starving bodies flush and renew damaged cells. All of this aligns neatly with the youthful group’s principles on health, food inequality, environmental awareness and more.
But then Miss Novak introduces the students to more contentious dieting concepts, including “club zero”, an underground army of hardcore believers convinced they can survive on no food whatsoever. Claiming to see through the lies of the mainstream media and the corporate food industry, these nutritional extremists keep below the radar because, as Miss Novak explains, “it frightens people when you question their truth”. The first rule of Extreme Diet Club, it seems, is you do not talk about Extreme Diet Club. The resulting fall-out does not end well, setting students, teachers and parents on a messy collision course.
There are strong religious undercurrents in Club Zero, including a visual homage to Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Hausner based some scenes on her own experiences of Catholic boarding school, and Miss Novak’s evangelical mission certainly has a quasi-religious quality, more cult leader than teacher, luring children away to join a kind of diet-based version of Islamic State. In her Cannes press notes, Hausner likens her to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. These questions of faith and fundamentalism are dark, rich areas which sadly the film only hints at but never explores.
As an aesthetic experience, like all of Hausner’s films, Club Zero is a sensory treat. Using precisely poised angles and slow zooms, cinematographer Martin Gschlacht frames the starkly geometric architecture of the school and parental homes with a coolly detached eye reminiscent of vintage Kubrick. Lustrous production design by Beck Rainford and vivid costumes by the director’s sister Tanja share a bright, retro, Pop Art feel that reinforces the film’s stylised, fable-like setting. Markus Binder’s lightly experimental score blends percussive, kinetic, sharp-angled rhythms with fragrant choral harmonies, to highly impressive effect.
But while the outer form may be exquisite, the inner drama is sorely lacking. How can a plot about adolescent rebellion, generational conflict, deranged cults and projectile vomit be so lacking in tension or suspense? Thinly drawn characters speaking flatly explanatory, barely modulated dialogue is one key reason. It is never clear whether these are purposely theatrical affections or simply the result of Hausner’s uncertain, lost-in-translation use of English. Either way, this approach creates an oddly affectless, distancing effect which does her film no favours. Club Zero should have the hormonal teen-crush mania of Carrie (1976) crossed with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), but instead it just feels like The No Breakfast Club.
Director: Jessica Hausner
Screenwriters: Jessica Hausner, Geraldine Bajard
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Amir El-Masry, Elsa Zylberstein, Mathieu Demy, Ksenia Devriendt, Luke Barker, Florence Baker, Samuel D Anderson, Gwen Currant
Cinematography: Martin Gschlacht
Editing: Karina Ressler
Production design: Beck Rainford
Costume design: Tanja Hausner
Music: Markus Binder
Producers: Philippe Bober, Mike Goodridge, Johannes Schubert, Bruno Wagner
Production company: Coop99 Filmproduktion (Austria)
World sales: Coproduction Office
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In English
109 minutes
