In CLUB ZERO, pitch black comedy and body horror combine with contemporary satire tied to food and consumerism in Jessica Hausner’s provocative Cannes Palme d’Or Nominee.
At an international boarding school, an unassuming, yet rigorous, Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) joins the teaching staff to instruct a new class on “conscious eating.” Her impressionable teenage students each have their own reasons for joining the class – to improve fitness, reduce their carbon footprint, or get extra credit. Although early lectures focus on mindful consumption, Miss Novak’s discussions soon become increasingly disordered and extreme. A suspicious headmistress, concerned parents and the failing health of her students lead everyone to question the inscrutable Miss Novak’s motivations for teaching the class. As a few devoted pupils fall deeper under her cult-like tutelage, they are given a new, even more sinister goal to aspire to – joining the ominous “Club Zero.”
Combining a pitch-black comedic sensibility with elements of body horror, CLUB ZERO satirizes contemporary inclinations toward myopic insularity and blind faith brought on by anxieties regarding food, consumerism and environmental catastrophe. The film had its world premiere in competition at Cannes and was a Best Picture nominee at both the Sitges and Munich International Film Festivals, is the latest from Austrian writer/director Jessica Hausner, one of Europe’s most fearless and provocative auteurs.
Equally impressive is the film’s original music by Markus Binder.
Jessica Hausner was born in Vienna in 1972. She studied directing at the Film Academy of Vienna where she made the award-winning short films FLORA (1996) and INTERVIEW (1999). Her debut feature film LOVELY RITA premiered in Cannes in Un Certain Regard in 2001. She returned to Un Certain Regard in 2004 with her second feature, HOTEL. In 2009, LOURDES was selected in Competition at the Venice Film Festival where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. AMOUR FOU (2014) premiered in Un Certain Regard and LITTLE JOE (2019), Jessica Hausner’s fifth feature film and her English- language debut, in Competition at Cannes where Emily Beecham received the “Prix d’interprétation féminine” for Best Actress.
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