‘Zero F*cks Given’: Adèle Exarchopoulos Tries To Conceal The Despair of Life In This Shimmering Drama [Cannes Review]

Of the many films playing at Cannes which have gained in resonance since the coming of the pandemic, “Zero F*cks Given” from French duo Julie Lecoustre, and Emmanuel Marre does not represent the creepiest, most alarming kind of coincidence — that description would better fit “Benedetta” from Dutch master Paul Verhoeven, which features an actual plague, face coverings and quarantine measures. But like many of us this past year and a half, the film’s central character, a young woman named Cassandre (Adèle Exarchopoulos), finds herself face to face with painful facts and difficult questions when her life dramatically slows down, and she is forced to stay on the ground, unable to board a plane.

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Cassandre is a flight attendant and usually spends all her time either in the air or in airport lounges. Because she works for a low-cost company, she actually gets to come back home to her base in Lanzarote at the end of the day, yet besides her colleagues, she has no one in her day-to-day life that she is really close to — “no attachments,” as she puts it. Her downtime is spent dancing in the loud clubs of the tourist island or sunning herself at the beach with other flight attendants like herself. This is clearly a life she has chosen, and when asked whether she can take on more hours over Christmas, she immediately answers in the affirmative. But her red lips, eyeliner, and elegant suit cannot perfectly conceal the profound despair always in her, simmering just below the surface.

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Exarchopoulos excels at hinting at this malaise without making it so conspicuous as to make her character seem unprofessional — air hostesses are also paid to smile, after all. In fact, an instructor puts it even more bluntly in a later scene when, after examining candidates’ ability to maintain a convincing smile for 30 seconds straight, she tells Cassandre that “no one cares about your personal issues.” Lecoustre and Marre need only point their camera at the reality of this work to reveal an overwhelming concern with appearances (second only to the security of all passengers) and its relationship to intense economic pressures. Indeed, the biggest part of the job for hostesses in low-cost companies isn’t to assist passengers but to sell them enough duty-free products onboard to meet the required individual sales quota. It’s a cynical and goal-driven task that Cassandre excels at, but when she learns that the only way for her to keep a job at the company is to train to become a manager, the responsibilities that come with the new position force her to become less robotic and more human.

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Cassandre travels the world but only sees it with blinders on, choosing to look at it from a slim airplane window. Cinematographer Olivier Boonjing’s choice of a boxy aspect ratio and shallow focus beautifully translates her self-inflicted isolation as well as the state of perpetual present that she tries to live in. It’s a style that recalls Lynne Ramsay’s sensational “Morvern Callar,” and the two films also feel related through their setting in the scaldingly hot Spanish sun and their dealing with grief. In an early scene, while drunk after another night of partying, Cassandre mentions to a colleague that her mother died several years ago in a car accident; it is almost a passing comment, lightyears away from the immediately traumatic discovery that opens Ramsay’s film. But it soon becomes clear that Cassandre is far from over it, and unlike Morvern, it is only when she finally goes back home that she begins to heal.

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When she is forced to touch down and return to her native Belgium to stay with her father (Alexandre Perrier) and sister (Mara Taquin), the visual style of “Zero F*cks Given” works to bring out the intense feelings of nostalgia that suddenly run through her like an electric shock. Replacing the long but uneventful hours spent in different but identical airports are relaxing evenings spent joking and talking with her family, all of them damaged in their own way by the sudden death of the mother. In the world of Cassandre’s sister and father, too, appearances are key (the two work together as estate agents), and we can see where Cassandre gets her talent for successfully closing a sale. But this recognition of both their shared pain and their shared abilities represents most of all for Cassandre the realization that she may not have to hide her sorrow from everyone. Lecoustre and Marre have the good sense to avoid ending the film on too positive a note — their protagonist has carried her grief for a long time, and she will not let it go overnight — but in delicate, truthful touches, they suggest for her the possibility of a future. [B+]

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