2023-11-15 01:37:18
Film release: November 17, 2023
CLUB ZERO
Austria, GB / 2023
Screenplay and direction: Jessica Hausner
Myself: Mia Wasikowska: ua
For a long time, Jessica Hausner’s “Club Zero” reminds one of “Serviam”, the film by her Austrian director colleague Ruth Mader, which was released in cinemas last year. The basic premise is similar – each time an elite school, where a single teacher, hiding her fanaticism behind extremely calm, gentle tones, indocrines a select group of students to their demise.
At Mader, a nun teaches the girls how to physically inflict Christ’s pain on themselves Jessica Hausnerwho also co-wrote the script, a new young teacher, who is widely admired for her commitment, offers a seminar on “Conscious Eating” (“Conscious Eating” – the film was shot in English) – or, as it turns out, on the doctrine of eat little and ultimately nothing at all… because that promises salvation and salvation.
In her imploring lectures, Miss Novak assures us that it is healthy to eat little, it makes the body efficient, the mind free, it protects nature and the environment and destroys a capitalist food industry. In contrast to Mader’s film, which was almost affectedly cryptic (which religion tempts you to do), Jessica Hausner approaches her topic more straightforwardly, not wanting to conjure it up in mythical terms, but rather thinking it through clearly.
She concentrates on the few students who are left (some of them drop out if you ask them not to eat anything anymore), and she also reflects in detail on the helplessness of parents who have learned these days for everything their offspring do, to show excessive and submissive understanding and no longer simply demand common sense (otherwise the young ones might suffer psychological damage…). The question of how much influence parents still have on children today is quite virulent and is being put into sharp focus here.
Miss Novak, the one from Mia Wasikowska is portrayed so inconspicuously and so inscrutably, always with a friendly, understanding word on her lips, never droolingly preaching, but drilling with gentleness, is the fascinating center of the film, everything depends on her credibility. But also to the young people who come from different worlds.
Ben (Samuel D. Anderson) is the only one who doesn’t have a super-rich family behind him, but a sensible middle-class mother, loving, good at cooking (excellent: Amanda Lawrence). She doesn’t put any pressure on him either. But he wants to take advantage of the scholarship that is offered to him, and not only attending Miss Novak’s course, but also taking part in it is a prerequisite. So he forces himself into the matter until he succumbs to peer pressure and Miss Novak’s strange powers of persuasion.
Fred’s rich parents (Luke Barker) communicate with him only briefly via Skype, and because he wants to become a dancer and is in love with Miss Novak, he seeks salvation in her absurd theses.
More of the girls are moving forward than Ragna (Florence Baker) and Helen (Gwen Currant), who escapes the final catastrophe by chance, r Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt) into the center, who throws all her political resistance at her parents with her provocative hunger excesses and is forced to perform a truly disgusting scene: vomiting food and then slowly eating the vomit once more…
Although the parents almost manage to remove Miss Novak from the school (in the end the headmistress – Sidse Babett Knudsen – the hefty fees that are paid, more important than a teacher), this has already won. Her four “chosen ones” disappear from their parents’ homes while Christmas music plays penetratingly (the sound underlying the film is constantly strong in every respect). Here Jessica Hausner can only evade the unreal and surreal, letting her “enter” into a nature painting. We don’t find out exactly, but what is meant is clear. These poor fanatics will certainly be happy to die with Miss Novak and her “Club Zero” of the chosen ones… It is then clear that Jessica Hausner has once once more made a horror film.
In the end, however, the director (like Ruth Mader with her central nun character) leaves the viewer alone. We don’t find out who Miss Novak is, where her madness comes from, or where her strength comes from. A “prayer” to a mother goddess in front of a private altar with a lotus flower does not adequately explain the madness that lies within her and which has such a destructive effect…
The strength of the film is that you never doubt it. Yes, that’s exactly how it might go – young, idealistic people, dissatisfied with the world and their parents’ generation, easily influenced, looking for “values”, for “ways”, for “ideals”, for “improving the world”, for ” “Self-optimization” … don’t you shorten the film tremendously if you just talk regarding “eating disorders,” as you read in some reviews? Isn’t food more of a metaphor here? Isn’t that how Hitler boys and girls were made? Or today – terrorists? You just have to pack them correctly.
And this film succeeds in doing that, as it has an international cast, was shot in England and, thanks to the English language, will effortlessly carry the ideas of an Austrian director into the world.
Renate Wagner
1700022065
#Movie #CLUB #ZEROOnline #Merker
