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SYNOPSIS
Cassandre is a flight attendant for a low-cost airline. She’s always willing to take on extra hours and carries out her duties with robotic efficiency. On the side, she just goes with the flow and floats between Tinder, parties and lazy days. “Reviewing the film, a critic for the French weekly Télérama has suggested that ‘flight attendants, in the history of cinema, say something about their time,’ about the era that they represent or embody [les hôtesses de l’air au cinema disent quelque chose de leur temps] (the critic, Louis Guichard, refers, among other characters, to Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown). Now, this is certainly true about Cassandre, an allegory of our time. Cassandre’s name recalls the Greek prophetess, but her prophecies are about the present rather than the future; or better: what she prophesizes, without knowing it, without caring about it, without giving a fuck (rien à foutre), is what is happening today, every day, in our neoliberal capitalist present. Cassandre is a Cassandra without future—a complete paradox for a prophetess. She prophesizes a disaster that is already taking place: the destruction of work, of the possibility for work to be fulfilling and transformational. […] Zero Fucks Given ushers us into the world of hyperflexibility, a world where tomorrows are made of hangovers from the present. This is a film that cannot leave you indifferent in front of the very spectacle of a generalized indifference.” (from the introduction by Peter Szendy, Comparative Literature and Humanities, Brown University) |