The Eating Disorder Film With a Vomit Scene Shocking Cannes
Jessica Hausner doesn’t make it easy. The writer-director’s films are purposely, obstinately artificial, filled with stiff, mannered dialogue, and they all deal with the frailty of human existence and the limitations of our bodies. As a result, her body of work (no pun intended) can feel alienating and sterile, especially because of its focus on outsiders who all share the quality of being, er, mousy.
In Club Zero, the latest of these heroines, if that’s the right word, is Ms. Novak, a prim teacher with neatly bobbed hair and a quiet, awkward demeanor, who arrives at a school where she is taking up a position as a teacher of nutrition. In the film, which premiered this week at the Cannes Film Festival, it quickly becomes clear that Ms. Novak (played reservedly by Mia Wasikowska) has some, to put it mildly, rather original ideas about diet, as she immediately sets about teaching her pupils to radically cut down on food.
Novak’s theory is that students should practice “conscious eating,” in order to become aware of their food while chewing and digesting. Gradually, the five adolescent students taking this module start starving themselves, to the confusion and distress of their parents. All the while, Ms. Novak has the support of her head teacher, Mrs. Dorset, played by Sidse Babsett Knudsen. Indeed, the new teacher is seemingly recognised by all as a brave pioneer in her field, giving these early scenes a feeling of absurd unreality. This is a discomfiting kind of science-fiction, anchored in a timeless sort of era, like ours but at a weird, distancing remove.