Get ready to be transported to an expensive English boarding school for talented teenagers, where the bleak, clean spaces are arranged in ominously geometrical order. In Club Zero, director Jessica Hausner’s eye for threatening design is on full display as we watch students in a sporty pan-gender uniform move stackable plastic chairs to form a circle. But amidst this sterile environment, there is a glimmer of hope in the form of Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska), who is at the school to teach an elective on nutrition. Her focus on “conscious eating” is a breath of fresh air, and even the patrician headmistress Miss Dorset (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is intrigued.
But as we delve deeper into the lives of these high-achieving students, we discover a shared blind faith in self-abnegation. Anorexia is too monstrous a thing to minimize, and Hausner’s attention to detail speaks to her in-depth research. Anyone who has faced down adolescent anorexia will recognize the young people’s denials and defiance, as well as the parents’ bumbling efforts to help.
But amidst the darkness, there are moments of bitter humor and even a brilliant percussive score by Markus Binder. And while you may long for the story to explode into something stranger, perhaps that is just a desire for resolution. In the end, like those helpless parents, we just want to see those kids eat.
Don’t miss Club Zero at Cannes (Competition), directed and written by Jessica Hausner and starring Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen, and more. Running time is 1 hr, 50 mins, and the sales agent is Coproduction Office.
