On Tuesday 26 November, we will hold a preview screening featuring a Q&A with director Jessica Hausner.
At an international boarding school, the 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.'
The Garden Cinema View:
Jessica Hausner's latest satirical enigma is sure to fascinate and enrage in equal measures and has already been divisive with audiences and reviewers alike.
Club Zero highlights the problems arising from the health craze culture with alarming accuracy: the obsessive pursuit of health, the manipulative wellness jargon, as well as how genuine concerns like the environmental crisis can be coopted for coercive purposes. Like her previous work (Lourdes, Hotel, and Little Joe), the film acerbically critiques sacrosanct dogmas, while remaining stubbornly ambiguous about its aim. Hausner’s characters are equally morally ambiguous and difficult to pin down, further adding to the unsettling quality.
There are echoes of Haneke and early Lanthimos in the deadpan performances, composed cinematography, and exploration of human malice. Yet Hausner is a highly original filmmaker with a singular vision that exposes the complex structures of hierarchical systems in unexpected ways.
