Disable atime update for specific files or folders

I hit an scenario where the update of the atime field in a Lustre file system from several simultaneous nodes performing reads on a single file is causing a severe performance loss.

Is there any way to ask an arbitrary command not to update the atime without having to mount the FS with the noatime option? Other users in the system could rely on this field for their operations, so I don't want to do system wide changes, if possible.

I can add the O_NOATIME flag in my own compiled programs, but I need to use it in other tools like gzip.