Speak about your cinematic scorching potatoes.

“Membership Zero” is a drama performed out within the soft-spoken tones of self-help communicate, a satire on the indulged habits of indulged kids of the indulgent wealthy. It’s about meals and the swirl of contemporary points surrounding our consumption of it.

Director and co-writer Jessica Hausner’s story takes within the consuming issues of our “You’ll be able to by no means be too wealthy or too skinny” period, the cultural obsession with “well being,” and dietary environmentalism as we go to a tony personal college that dives into the “aware consuming” fad a tad too critically.

The movie folds “saving the planet” by consuming much less, anti-consumerism and survivalism right into a story of “aware consuming” (the opposite identify for it) run amok.

Mia Wasikowska performs an knowledgeable within the subject — She has a web site! — employed to be a instructor and coach to the primary children at this Euro-prep boarding college that’s run, as such faculties typically are, by wealthy dad and mom who serve on a board.

Being in tune with the newest “factor” and listening to their fad-hunting children inform them “Vegan is so OUT” has them monitor down Miss Novak (Wasikowska) and put her on the college. The half-dozen teenagers who join her first course of meditation, mindfulness and chewing very very slowly point out “weight” points and well being considerations, together with “saving the planet” and the like as their causes for enrolling.

Miss Novak can be their spirit information, serving to them retrain their our bodies to eat much less, think about what they eat extra and sharpen their minds with practices that she guarantees will extend their lives, letting them outlive these exterior their circle who’re consuming themselves into oblivion.

Fred (Luke Barker) is a ballet dance pupil and a diabetic whose distracted dad and mom are operating a help-the-natives mission in far-off Ghana. He’s not properly sufficient to endure life there, however he’s satisfied he can eat or quick his approach out of his insulin photographs.

Ragna (Florence Baker) is a trampoline gymnast who likes the burden management and mind-“sharpening” virtues of consuming much less. Lots much less. Her weight-obsessed mom (Keeley Forsyth) appears on board with this program, however her impatient father (Lukas Turtur) rages at his maybe bulemic spouse and a daughter who appears decided to go down the identical path, sanctioned by her college.

And Ben (Samuel D Anderson) is a “sensible” pupil, son of a single mother (Amanda Lawrence) who cooks and feeds him in ways in which belie his skinny body. He can be a tough one to promote on this enterprise of lowering your weight loss plan to a single potato wedge, rigorously carved and consumed from one’s in any other case empty cafeteria plate.

Waskiwska, feigning a imprecise pan-European accent, makes a terrific cult chief within the Born Once more/True Believer mildew.

“Somebody who doesn’t eat is not tolerated,” she warns her half dozen college students, in between chants, meditations and lectures about “Autophagy,” every part the physique “doesn’t want” by way of meals.

Society will push again, however they have to keep the course, she says. Particularly in the event that they wish to attain the enlightenment of “Membership Zero.”

We hear Miss Novak flatter her disciples, BS her headmistress/boss (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and pray — for need of a greater phrase — to her perception system within the hope that she will be worthy of it.

And we hear the scholars, a tighter-and-tighter-knit-circle, debate the evils of “the meals trade,” the dietary “trash” it produces (Excessive fructose corn syrup? Take a bow.) and the “carbon emissions” discount that might lead to all people in every single place consuming extra mindfully and consuming much less.

It’s all handled with a dry seriousness — the children taking their educating as a jumping-off level, their instructor welcoming that and wealthy, self-involved and distracted dad and mom not noticing their children are seeming thinner and extra gaunt with every encounter.

The college’s administration and key dad and mom on the board appear most intent on patting themselves on the again for being quickest to leap on a brand new development.

However each false prophet has a deadly flaw. “Membership Zero” ponders the notion that our present tradition won’t settle for proof to that impact, that political correctness would possibly get in the way in which of frequent sense and that youngsters — particularly these self-starving their method to Nirvana — won’t be as simply de-programmed as they had been programmed.

The dry nature of the fabric and the way it’s handled restrict the drama on this topic and flattened-out performances decrease its leisure worth. But it surely’s daring, any approach you slice that single potato wedge you’re having for lunch.

Being “aware” could be a good factor to deliver to all corners of your life. It’s simply that one can by no means be too cautious with who to just accept as your information to that psychological state, and with how far to take its observe.

Score: unrated, very disturbing themes

Forged: Mia Wasikowska, Florence Baker, Samuel D Anderson, Luke Barker, Gwen Currant, Amanda Lawrence, Keeley Forsyth and Lukas Turtur

Credit: Directed by Jessica Hausner, scripted by Jessica Hausner and Géraldine Bajard. A Movie Motion launch.

Working time: 1:50