‘Club Zero Review: Mia Wasikowska Stars In Jessica Hausners Audaciously Disturbing Drama About Institutionalized Eating Disorders
Jessica Hausner, director of the very daring and disturbing eating disorder thriller Club Zero (yes, I used the words "eating disorder" and "thriller" in the same sentence - it's that kind of boundary-breaking film), has the potential to be a great director. His last film, "Little Joe" (2019), a sci-fi story about an evil houseplant, was a dark midnight allegory of the age of mind-altering drugs. "Club Zero" won't be for everyone, but Hausner, channeling the combination of Hitchcock and Cronenberg and Todd Haynes from "Village of the Damned" and "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," makes it all the more compelling and provocative. Head kick
Club Zero is set in an elite British boarding school where seven students, in the opening scene, sit in a circle with the school's new nutrition teacher, Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska). Every student has a story about why they want to eat better: to save the planet, to lose weight or get rid of body fat, to fight their addiction to eating junk food.
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Miss Novak, with her slight accent, piercings and spiky hair and authoritative coolness, is there to save the day. This will put them in "mindful eating" mode, as opposed to mindful eating, where you cut out something that tastes good and eat as much as you want. On the other hand, mindful eating is healthy, rigorous and above all memorable . It's about making sure that every bite you take is good for you, and part of that is taking fewer bites. "We all eat too much," Ms. Novak said. Less can be more in our relationship with food.
Many of us had such thoughts. In theory, eating sensibly is probably better than mindless indulgence. But as students sit in the cafeteria examining the food on their compartment trays, holding each morsel with a fork so they can think before putting it in their mouths, we can already see what's happening. Nova trains the Misses to be kitchen control demons. Eating has already started to become a ritual virtue. We have already begun to distrust them as a source of joy. In short, they learn to be anorexic.
Anorexia is definitely a serious issue, and countless dramas have tackled it. But the darkly destructive premise of Club Zero is the film's institutionalization of anorexia. It is taught - as prime self-discipline, high moral values and religious fervor. Students who eat less think about investing in the environment and telling the truth. The joy of eating is replaced by the joy of growing in avoidance. And Lady Novak is just getting started.
Hausner, who wrote the film (with Geraldine Baird), uses something about food that is bigger than food. Anorexia, in its deeply hidden suffering, has sometimes been described as a form of individual fascism, in which the patient is both master and prisoner. Mia Wasikowska, a superb actress, plays Miss Novak with the believable benevolence of a new-age guru, and the film uses the hypocrisy of her presence and the students' reactions to portray a new kind of mentality. which began to permeate the culture.
They are people in search of saviors, comfort, extreme methods to deal with their extreme isolation and anxiety. And that means fighting an apocalyptic vision of what the future will look like: dwindling resources, melting Earth. Is it a paranoid mental illness or is it reality? Part of the film's surprisingly funny but honest design is that eating disorders, with their coded ranking patterns, can be seen as almost aspirational in the context of today's sociopolitical anxieties.
"Club Zero" is also an example of children picking up bad ideas fed by culture from their parents. The seven students in Miss Novak's class have different reactions to her ideals. Ragnar (Florence Baker), a trampoline gymnast with an already conflicted relationship with her parents, is immediately imposed the gospel of eating less. Fred (Luke Barker), a non-binary dancer, is diabetic and is tempted to believe that abstinence can cause insulin withdrawal. But Ben (Samuel D. Anderson), whose single English mother (Amanda Lawrence) — who looks like a Wallace and Gromit character — likes to cook big meals, threatens to tear that bond apart. And so it does. Because of this, Miss Novak encourages the other students to hug her, which they do, taking advantage of the fact that she has a crush on a girl. Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt) is already bulimic, so she is ready, as we shall see, to become Miss Novak's most terrifying extreme disciple.
What we see in "Club Zero" is the formation of a cult. And what makes Austrian Hausner (this is his second English-language film) such a masterful and daring filmmaker is that he draws you into the communal psyche at all its entwined levels of obsession, insecurity, conformity and trust. Children replace it with a new version of themselves; It's one of the stories of our time, in a way. And as they fall under the spell, Miss Nova takes them to the next level of purity. It's called Club Zero and it's a lifestyle so radical that the culture will never accept it. But that's the best thing about mindful eating: realizing you don't need to eat at all.
"Club Zero" is a thriller based on the cursed children's desire to return from the abyss. Marcus Binder's musical score is a satirical and fantastical marvel, filled with drumming in the background of Hare Krishna chanting. The film follows a series of conflicts between the headmistress and the parents of Miss Novak and Miss Dorsett (Sidsey Babette Knudsen), the angrier they become, the more effective they become. You can order teenagers to do things, but you can't fight an eating disorder—or a cult—especially if the cult is based on a broken notion of inclusion. When the bulimic Elsa confronts her parents in her bedroom and tells them what her nutritional gluttony really means, it's such a terrifying scene - and not for the faint of heart - that it's an unpleasant cause of catharsis.
I think what makes Club Zero work, and what the film connects with how many of us feel about our processed food culture, is that college students think of joining us to give up food, they hurt consumerism. Although in reality they bow down to consumerism. The ultimate goal of consumer culture is to separate us from each other; The more isolated we are, the more products (including food) we have to relate to. And in Club Zero, the students' rebellion against consumerism becomes completely isolated, a way to hide their identity. They have Miss Novak, the Stone of Sensual Denial, with their cult, but in all other respects they are hungry.
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