Mia Wasikowska in Club Zero (Film Movement)

A sometimes intriguing, often grating satire, director Jessica Hausner’s baleful Club Zero is animated by deadpan mockery of upper-middle-class Euro groupthink. Seldom has a script thrust so many fatuities into the mouths of self-righteous bougies or forced their supposed enemies to blurt out such vast quantities of faux-revolutionary outbursts. These pseuds are all the same, the movie seems to jeer, while testing our tolerance with off-putting stylistic flourishes.

A new teacher at an elite boarding school, Miss Novak (a smug Mia Wasikowska) interrogates her uniformed teenage pupils in a closed classroom—a scene among many taking place in claustrophobic, sealed environments. She wants to know why they want to change their attitude around food. One wants to eat less to improve athletic performance, another wants more control over her body, another wants to place less stress on the planet.

This exchange gives Miss Novak free rein. Soon she urges the students not to eat at all. She promises them liberation, control, even immortality by foregoing food. Any objection she just chalks up to false consciousness. “Your mind interferes,” she hectors them. “It isn’t used to thinking that, in fact, we don’t need to eat.” Soon the children are fighting among themselves and defying their priggish parents at mealtimes, tossing off wanna-be salvos like, “Those who can live without food are free from all social and commercial pressure… By the power of my mind, I can alter reality!” (The young woman uttering this delusional truism follows up with “Mom, you’d get cancer if I wanted you to get cancer.”) Shouldn’t send-ups this broad be fun?

As all the manipulation and mind-screwing swirl about, Hausner throws in discordant touches to keep viewers off-balance. The soundtrack throbs with keening, droning, aggressive drumming, and doctored or “ironic’’ versions of familiar tunes. Camera angles mimic off-kilter security footage. Characters either wield sweeping, dogmatic statements or react with irritation.

The director toys with themes to explain the students’ thrall to the teacher and the punishing zip-calorie diet she proposes—religious imagery suggests a higher level of devotion to the cause. It dwells over some issues, like the abuse of authority over the young, but glancingly. It also tries to pull at our heartstrings, except we don’t have enough insight into the uniformly stubborn, tin-eared characters to care much about their fates. However, a little backhanded satire now and then lightens the mood. Sidse Babett Knudsen is creepily smarmy as a headmistress playing both sides against the middle in a dispute with concerned parents. The supposedly gifted children, praised and nurtured like precious hothouse flowers, show little talent in their distinctly average gymnastic and dance routines.

Club Zero doesn’t really end so much as runs out of energy. Here everything may just be a construct—a little like the empty calories its indoctrinated and indoctrinating teacher decries.