Spotlight on Jessica Hausner

A spotlight on the Six feature films to date of Jessica Hausner.

Lovely Rita (2001)
Hotel (2004)
Lourdes (2009)
Amour Fou (2014)
Little Joe (2019)
Club Zero (2023)

I have to credit Sam Juliano for helping me come across Austrian director Jessica Hausner. In Jan 2011, Sam Juliano placed her film Lourdes as his top film of 2010. I hadn’t heard of that film or seen anything by Jessica Hausner up till that point. I rectified my blindspot and found Lourdes to be a brilliant combination of dry wit, humour and documentary. The film’s open ended presentation of faith and belief made me recall the style of Todd Haynes’ Safe and Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine. I thought of Todd Haynes’ Safe again when viewing Jessica Hausner’s newest film Club Zero (2023) but Club Zero goes off in a different direction. Both Lourdes and Club Zero are fascinating films that contain multiple styles and don't neatly fit in a single category. I felt a proper spotlight was needed to fully appreciate Jessica’s directorial style and see how the other films fit.

Hybrid genre

All of her 6 films tackle a different subject and on first glance appear to have nothing in common with each other. However, one common classifier across all 6 films is that each film is a blend of multiple genres and can’t be easily labeled as a single genre.

Lovely Rita appears to be a straight forward coming-of-age film but there is a shock in store especially if one isn’t aware of the real life incident that inspired the film. Hotel combines elements of horror, folklore in an artistic manner without any of the jump scares or dissonant music that one associates with horror films. The film also has a nod towards David Lynch (Twin Peaks curtain) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (hallway shots). Amour Fou appears to be a linear period film but the double suicide in the film puts a completely different spin by the time end credits roll. Little Joe combines sci-fi, horror and science in the most unexpected manner. Lourdes and Club Zero use dry wit to examine how faith and belief shapes people.

Of all the six features, Lourdes and Club Zero compliment each other nicely. Both films show how people are impacted by their beliefs: Lourdes shows a positive side in which people’s beliefs can provide them a way of healing and hope for their lives but Club Zero shows a negative side where blind belief can lead to a cult like following where believers are led down a potentially dangerous path. The increase in polarizing behaviour since 2020 and the increase in cult like worshiping certainly makes a film like Club Zero as highly relevant in our contemporary world.

Loose Threads

With the exception of Amour Fou, the remaining films have a degree of vagueness about the ending. The most abstract and open ending is that of Hotel while Lovely Rita, Little Joe give enough clues for viewers to know what will unfold next. Lourdes leaves a lot for the viewer to interpret events while Club Zero narrows down its focus but still leaves it up for the viewer to know what will happen to the students who are led away by their teacher.

Film Style

Jordan Raup’s insightful interview with Jessica Hausner as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s retrospective on her films helps shed light on her style. These words by Jessica standout: “Normally when I start a new film, I have a very simple logline in mind. It’s a short sentence or word that is the starting point.”

These words help explain how each film can grow from a single seedling of an idea. In the interview, Jessica explains the real life incident she read about that formed the genesis of Lovely Rita (spoiler alert) and Amour Fou and provides insights about the other films. She also addresses the abstract ending of Hotel. The interview was published after the release of Little Joe so Club Zero is not covered by the interview.

All of her films are insightful portrays of female characters who have to make crucial decisions. Amour Fou is the only film where the main character isn’t a woman but even in that film, the female character has to make a critical decision. The films show a thoughtful narrative arc which charts out a character’s journey and growth.

It is an interesting exercise to contrast this style of Jessica Hausner with that of her countryman Ulrich Seidl. Hausner is interested in exploring incidents that lead to a character’s decision and even the aftermath from their choices. Ulrich Seidl is instead invested in showing the suffering his characters face and in most of his films, he is fixated on sexual events.

Lourdes

Lourdes (2009, Austria/France/Germany, Jessica Hausner)

Religion is a divisive element in the human race. It causes wars, divides families, heals and saves people while also leading them down a destructive path. There are struggles over whether God exists and then over which religion is the true path to salvation. Reincarnation is not accepted universally nor is the promise of afterlife. Yet, a majority of the human race still holds faith in some form of religion or God. Then there are those who do not believe in God but believe in an entity of some kind that holds sway over humans. The various faiths may differ but they are still united in their belief towards an omnipresent yet unseen force. The only substantial evidence comes in the form of a miracle, a sign that a higher power does indeed exist. This sign could be an act of a statue accepting a form of human devotion (example: the drinking of milk by Ganesh statues) or it could be an unexpected healing of a person.

Jessica Hausner’s film takes place in Lourdes, a place where millions flock every year to either get healed or observe a sign from a higher power. If people's intentions for making a pilgrimage to Lourdes is a selfish need, then it is inevitable that the small town will be buzzing with gossip and anticipation. The film shows that gossip spreads like wildfire because everyone believes they have an equal chance to get healed. One would expect a dedicated religious person to have better odds of observing a miracle but there are no rational answers as to who can get healed. In Hausner’s film, even the priests are forced to concede the often repeated statement “God works in mysterious ways”. As a result, each and every person who heads to Lourdes believes that a miracle is within reach.

The main character of Lourdes, a gentle and smiling Christine (played perfectly by Sylvie Testud), does not hold any bitterness in her heart, even though she is confined to a wheelchair. Christine also does not let her limited mobility get in the away of making various trips around Europe. Her conversations indicate that she often travels on pilgrimages and cites Rome as her favourite on the basis of the Italian capital’s cultural superiority over Lourdes. Christine has feelings for one of the male officers accompanying them on their pilgrimage trip but those feelings are only one way until Christine is touched by a miracle. The unexpected miracle brings some delight in people around Christine while arouses jealousy and distrust in others. The distrust arises because a miracle is portrayed to be like winning the lottery -- once someone is cured, then no one else can win the life changing prize on a particular trip.

Jessica Hausner brilliantly presents her film with dry wit and humour. The pilgrimage events are depicted documentary style while the script gently pokes fun at the beliefs, rituals and certain egoistic people seeking a miracle. The film does not openly satirize the characters but instead allows audience to derive their own sentiments. Such a vague and open ended presentation of faith and belief brings to mind the style of Todd Haynes’ Safe and Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine, two films that also present events in a straight forward manner while subtly eliciting laughs at the expense of people who blindly buy into someone else’s beliefs.