Zero Fucks Given

Directed by Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre

Running time: 1hr50 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY

Zero Fucks Given starring Adèle Exarchopoulos

When writing about a politically substantial film which is also funny and sometimes sexy, you have a choice to make: dive into the raw bones of what it’s about, the structure, the praxis, why it matters, how it functions as a text. Or, if you love the film and really want people to see it, you may consider instead constructing a kind of juicy textual trailer, pitching a scene or moment that might help sell someone on actually watching the thing. I loved Zero Fucks Given, so here goes nothing…

A beautiful young flight attendant is nearly nude. She is photographing herself, her long hair tumbling over her shoulders. She is painfully hot. She is played by Adèle Exarchopoulos. She is hoping to convince a man on a dating app to stop sending emoji and actually hook up with her. Luckily, Exarchopoulos is a very talented actor, and just about able to persuade us through a convincing portrait of sad-eyed, burned-out apathy that this is someone who might conceivably find herself in the position of having to convince randos online that they want to bang her.

Zero Fucks Given is about inhuman systems built by human beings to service profit. It’s also about grief and ennui, but it is most striking when it is exploring, via a fictional low-budget airline called Wing (very obviously Ryanair, right down the yellow and blue), the world of jobs that companies would happily replace with robots if it were cheaper to do so. The villains in this film don’t have a face — they are voices on phones, reading from corporate scripts. One voice from a mobile phone company cold-calls a customer with an offer to switch to a new data package, which is then problematised by the off-script death of the bill-payer. Another voice can only offer compulsory training or termination as a contract expires. When Exarchopoulos’ role as cabin crew demands she be the bad guy, reciting the corporate script, we hear her voice but don’t see her.

Not that faces aren’t important too: perhaps the highlight of the film is a series of direct-to-camera smiles, smiles which must be held for a minimum of thirty seconds, as cabin crew are trained to become cabin managers. Everything here is about control, leaving as little room as possible for human judgement to intervene. Somehow the film is still frequently a riot, laugh-out-loud funny as it delivers bleakly existential corporate mantras (“there is no past, there is no future, there is only here and now as a cabin manager”) with deadpan charm.

ZERO FUCKS GIVEN (RIEN À FOUTRE) (2021) Written by Julie Lecoustre, Emmanuel Marre | Shot by Olivier Boonjing | Edited by Nicolas Rumpl

Selected for Critics’ Week at the 74th Cannes Film Festival