Filmmakers Jessica Hausner and Alice Rohrwacher are, without a doubt, two of the most mercurial, singular voices in European cinema right now. Though she garnered attention for her teen psycho-thriller Lovely Rita in 2001, Hausner, who is Austrian, really made waves with Little Joe (2019), a gorgeously stylized, vaguely sci-fi drama about a killer plant. Little Joe was difficult to engage with, but viewers willing to follow its meticulousness down a rabbit hole were rewarded with a creative dystopian worldview and cautionary tale. Similarly, the Italian Rohrwacher announced herself with The Wonders (2014), a coming-of-age story set in a honey farm, but really leaped onto the global cinema radar with Happy as Lazzaro (2018), an exploration of contemporary society, vanishing traditions, corruption and the false promise of the social contract. Hausner and Rohrwacher are remarkable not just for their sensitive filmmaking but also for forging their own visual languages and defying accepted marketing logic.
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In Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, a preternaturally gifted British tomb-raiding archeologist, Arthur (Josh O’Connor, Challengers), gets out of an Italian prison and reunites with his old gang in Tuscany for more treasure hunting. As he does this, he wrestles with the idea of living with the ghost of his presumed-dead girlfriend as opposed to having a new life with an opera student, Italia (Carol Duarte). Hausner’s Club Zero sees the unconventional teacher Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska, Bergman Island) join an elite boarding school to launch a class on “conscious eating” and quickly finds herself the leader of a dangerously devoted clutch of students who push back when their parents, and the school, try to rein in Novak’s increasingly cultish teachings.
It goes without saying that La Chimera isn’t just about digging up Etruscan artifacts, and Club Zero isn’t solely about a strange teacher. La Chimera was lushly shot on 35mm film (by cinematographer Hélène Louvart) to create an almost tactile connection to history — national and personal. The specters of the past linger in every building, hillside, buried statue and unwitting companion, casting a long shadow on the present. Arthur’s link to the past hinders his ability to move forward in life, as indeed the country’s progress. Despite being mired in a rut, both Arthur and Italy heave with life in La Chimera and, ironically, ultimately touch down on an optimistic side of the fence.
Hausner, once again, creates stark, geometric spaces within which to explore the structures that fail parents. Beck Rainford and Tanja Hausner’s impeccable mid-century modern production and costume design underscore the distinction between Miss Novak and her students and everyone else — the comforting order of the school illustrated by its straight lines and color blocking. Anyone with a taste for Little Joe’s carefully calibrated performances, or even Yorgos Lanthimos’s intentionally stilted delivery, will revel in Hausner’s heightened reality, and won’t really figure it out until after it’s lingered in the subconscious for a few days.
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La Chimera and Club Zero are like great cities — Buenos Aires, Karachi, Munich — that don’t offer much by way of the so-called attractions. You visit and just allow yourself to “be” in them for a while. Hausner and Rohrwacher don’t make films that are viewed or deconstructed on the go, or even intellectualized in the moment. Both are low on standard plot mechanics. Audiences are meant to get immersed in their films as they are watching and leave the theater stimulated.
