Films
Getting to the bottom of sonic research; another Leonard Cohen biog; a charming lo-fi fantasy; and more…
FLUX GOURMET With a climactic scene presenting colonoscopy as performance art, it’s almost too tempting too say that Flux Gourmet is the film where Peter Strickland finally disappears up his own backside. The director’s fifth film feels like a layer cake of his many signature obsessions – ajus of luminously macabre art direction, a sprinkling of fastidiously detailed sound design, a solid base detailing the horror of shopping/bodies/ England, all topped with a delicious cream of neurotic eroticism. At times it feels like a feature-length episode of Toast Of London as co-directed by Luis Buñuel and Peter Greenaway, with a scatological delirium unmatched since Pink Flamingos.
It might also be one of the funniest films about a rock group since This Is Spinal Tap. It follows a trio of “culinary performance artists” (Strickland muse Fatma Mohamed, Asa Butterfield, complete with Mark Gardener 1990 fringe, and Ariane Labed) in a month residency at the Sonic Catering Institute – acountry manor dedicated to “the artistic pursuit of alimentary and culinary salvation”. During their stay the trio are followed by a depressed Greek dossierge (Makis Papadimitriou), documenting their progress while battling his own digestive ailments, patronised by Institute director (an imperiously eerie Gwendoline Christie) and assaulted with terrapins by the Mangrove Snacks (a mime troupe who were unsuccessful in their own residency application). Notwithstanding the surreal setting, much of the humour, from disputes over the band name (Elle & The Fatty Acids? Elle & The Gastric Ulcers?) to the performance (“You didn’t even know what a flanger was until I told you!”) will appeal to anyone who has embarked in the absurd, shambolic, occasionally glorious collective enterprise of being in a band.