Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) is a young teacher who arrives at an elitist international boarding school to teach “conscious eating” classes to a small group of students. The students allege the “need to reduce consumerism”, “protect the environment”, “take care of the line” or “improve willpower” as reasons for attending talks in which the ‘guru’ teacher will instill in them the most dangerous eating habits without the parents or the rest of the teachers realizing what is happening until things reach unsuspected limits.
This is roughly the disturbing story that Jessica Hausner proposes to us with Club Zero, which competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and won the award for best original soundtrack at the Sitges Festival. A film whose premiere in cinemas curiously coincides with the same week as the Barcelona Food Fair and in which the Austrian director once again flaunts a minimalist and very colorful aesthetic to reflect on current society, the eating habits or the education of our young people from a satirical point of view.
“Club Zero is not just about eating disorders, I think it talks more about a strange type of faith and nutritional religion. I found it interesting to show how an idea can influence the action of humans. But above all the film goes against the fake news of internet,” the director of Little Joe or Amour Fou tells this newspaper, who advocates for greater responsibility of parents in the education of their children. “Do parents really take charge or do we delegate that responsibility by trusting the teachers? In the film, Professor Novak distances the students from their parents. She tells them that they do not see who they really are. And when they perceive the danger and they decide to save their children, it’s already too late. So how can parents look after their children when they simply don’t have time for them? I think teachers or caregivers do it well and it’s not about blaming them, on the contrary. We should value their work more than what we do. I think the situation is not very well resolved because we live in a society that only values ??work and success. As parents, we not only have to raise our children, but also become professionals of internet browsing, look after them. We should worry more about the young generations,” he insists. A fear that is evident in the dialogue between the director of the center, played by the Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen), with Miss Novak: “Parents do not have time to be with their children, so it is our responsibility to provide them with the attention and affection they need.
“The pressure they have is very high and it is complicated today, but not only for young people, but also for us to find our way within all that multiple information that is on the internet and social networks. It is like an engine that creates constantly new ideas, groups and cults. You’re in, you’re out. You’re right, you’re wrong. It’s really a jungle of information that is difficult to analyze,” Hausner continues.
And he emphasizes that the film also talks about “how ideas can radicalize people.” We see it in Elsa, the young woman who eats her own vomit while her parents observe the image in horror in a scene not suitable for delicate stomachs. “For her, refusing to eat becomes a political issue. She tells her parents that she is threatening capitalism and what she says is absolutely right. She claims that the food industry is behind everything and is destroying our health and the planet”.
Novak gradually manipulates the students with the alleged benefits of a mono diet. “Eating less prolongs life. More and more people are getting sick and dying early because of poor nutrition,” he warns them while showing them a poster with all kinds of foods that are “harmful and tempting” to the body, inviting them to try a real change to purify body and mind and to go up the level until you end up being part of that zero club to which the title alludes and which implies absolute fasting. “She tells them that ‘it’s good if you don’t eat it all,’ but that doesn’t mean it’s true,” says Hausner, who chose Mia Wasikowska to play Miss Novak because “she wanted someone with an innocent appearance.” and Mia has something youthful, she looks like a child. But she also has something mysterious, strange and rigid and that was exactly what I was trying to find. Someone who is nice, very friendly and who you don’t think can fool you.”
“In some way,” he continues, “Club Zero’s intention is to show to what extent we are all influenced. You are a different person in every situation of your life and you are constantly influenced by everything, by what others say, by what you your parents taught, by what you have to do at work, by what you read on the internet. So we are all constantly influenced and manipulated. It is not easy to meet someone and understand what another person really thinks or feels, because we are all multiple people. I think sometimes it’s scary to think that you don’t really know who you are or who someone else is.”
The film wanders around in a strange mix of tragedy and humor. “I always look for the right tone in my films. The tragic but also ridiculous tone. I need to find that strangeness, the absurdity and the complex contradictions of life. But the important thing is that it provokes an uncomfortable laugh that comes from understanding a certain absurdity of life in general. It’s more about understanding that all of us are ridiculous sometimes too.”
And all this wrapped in a most disturbing soundtrack created by Markus Binder. “He used a percussive score to give the story tribal, cult vibes. The music reflects the fact that the cult is evolving, so it has a driven rhythm but is also a voice of its own.” A really scary voice.
