Club Zero – first-look review

In 2009 Jes­si­ca Haus­ner pre­sent­ed Lour­des at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val – a film about the French town which has become a revered sight of pil­grim­age for many Catholics after visions of the Vir­gin Mary sup­pos­ed­ly appeared in 1858. For what it’s worth, my Catholic high school ran an annu­al trip there for the more devout stu­dents. I nev­er went. It seems fair to sug­gest Haus­ner has returned to the over­ar­ch­ing theme of faith in her sixth fea­ture, albeit with the curi­ous alle­gor­i­cal fram­ing of a dis­or­dered eat­ing club which is formed at an elite high school, where new teacher Miss Novak (Mia Wasikows­ka) is installed to teach the pupils about ​“con­scious eating”.

While Novak claims the prac­tice of con­scious eat­ing has myr­i­ad ben­e­fits – includ­ing reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions, improv­ing gen­er­al health, and kick­start­ing the body into auto-cleans­ing – the real­i­ty is that her stu­dents are being encour­aged to restrict their diet, even­tu­al­ly to the point they can­not eat at all. A cou­ple of pupils quick­ly bow out, but five stick around: Ragna (Flo­rence Bak­er) wants to be bet­ter at tram­po­line, and her par­ents have already encour­aged her to eat less; Elsa (Kse­nia Devriendt) is inspired by her mother’s own eat­ing dis­or­der; Fred (Luke Bark­er) is a promis­ing dancer whose absent par­ents find him per­pet­u­al­ly dis­ap­point­ing, and Ben (Samuel D Ander­son) can get extra cred­it by attend­ing the class, which he needs for his scholarship.

This group are sus­cep­ti­ble to Novak’s preach­ing, which frames not eat­ing as a con­trol issue. She tells them even­tu­al­ly they will reach a point where they no longer need to eat at all, there­by becom­ing a part of ​‘Club Zero’. For what­ev­er rea­son, the oth­er adults and stu­dents in their orbit seem ambiva­lent, bare­ly notic­ing the shrink­ing appear­ance of the already thin group, who start to appear gaunt and jaundiced.

Per­haps Haus­ner intends for Club Zero to be a com­ment on the sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty of young, vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple into cults, where­by dan­ger­ous behav­iour is the admis­sion cost of feel­ing like they belong. Or per­haps the film is anoth­er medi­a­tion on faith – we see Novak pray­ing to a small shrine, mum­bling on about her mis­sion, and the final act implies a sort of ascen­sion for the stu­dents that tru­ly com­mit to star­va­tion. It’s a clum­sy metaphor though, not least because thin has always been in, and it’s some­what telling that all the stu­dents are already slim to begin with, which insid­i­ous­ly reen­forces the idea that only thin peo­ple can have eat­ing dis­or­ders – a sug­ges­tion which fur­ther stig­ma­tis­es fat peo­ple. Here, thin­ness is next to Godliness.

Most insult­ing of all is the sug­ges­tion that the kin­ship these stu­dents find in their teacher – who also hints at a phys­i­cal attrac­tion to Fred – ulti­mate­ly brings them the hap­pi­ness they so crave, free­ing them from their con­cerned par­ents. Novak is a sort of pied piper, lead­ing the teenagers to ruin, though her moti­va­tions remain unclear even at the film’s close. While it would be unfair to sug­gest Haus­ner is con­don­ing Novak’s actions, there is a sort of nihilis­tic glib­ness about the film which leaves a sour taste. Teamed with the film’s dis­tract­ing, over-the-top sound design and a gag­gle of per­for­mances that shoot for the stylised stunt­ed­ness of Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos and nev­er reach those heights, Club Zero fails to offer any­thing that its pre­de­ces­sors didn’t pro­vide in more suc­cinct and thought­ful ways.