Across her five previous features, Austrian director Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou, Lourdes, Little Joe) has developed a distinctly unique tone and now she’s back with her sixth outing, Club Zero. Led by Mia Wasikowska, the dark satire follows a nutrition teacher at an elite school whose relationship with five students takes a dangerous turn. Following a Cannes premiere last year, Film Movement picked it up for a U.S. release on March 15 in theaters and now the first trailer and poster have landed.
Here’s the synopsis: “At an international boarding school, an 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.'”
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “In Club Zero, the students of a radical nutrition class are taught the benefits of eating consciously––if they choose to eat at all. It’s the latest film from Austrian director Jessica Hausner, whose 2019 sci-fi drama Little Joe showed a similar level of concern for the things we put into our bodies. Club Zero is less a cautionary tale about eating disorders than a satire on environmental anxieties, extreme activism, and the sometimes-competitive nature of those who get swept up in it. That’s a tasty premise, but Hausner’s take is frankly a cynical one and, much like the plate of vomit that dominated headlines after the film’s premiere last week in Cannes, it leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.”
See the trailer below.
Club Zero opens in theaters on March 15.