PLOT: A “dossierge” chronicles a culinary art collective’s three week residency at the Sonic Catering Institute.
REVIEW: Some films are so unique, trying to review them as if they were a regular movie seems like an impossible task. For example, last week I wrote about Phil Tippett’s stop-motion feature Mad God. I was blown away by the artistry on display in that film, and yet had to give it a middle-of-the-road score because I didn’t enjoy sitting through it. It’s an awesome achievement, but it didn’t have the things I need to carry me through a viewing of a feature film, like characters to latch on to or a discernible plot. Writer/director Peter Strickland’s new film Flux Gourmet is more clearly understandable than Mad God and offers deeper insight into the lives of its characters, but it’s another movie that is so distinctive, it can be difficult to wrap your head around it.
The setting is the Sonic Catering Institute, run by Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie). An unnamed culinary art collective – a trio of people who combine performance art with the sounds of cooking food – has just been awarded a three week residency at the institute, and a writer has been assigned the task of chronicling their stay. As Flux Gourmet began, I was impressed by the world Strickland seemed to be building here. A “Sonic Catering Institute” focused on groups that make their art out of cooking sounds. The ridiculous performances the culinary art collective puts on. I was thinking that this all just came from the mind of Strickland… but then it struck me, the art world can be so absurd and pretentious, there probably are groups who want people to listen to the sounds of them cooking food. It was only once the movie ended that I discovered Strickland is part of a group called The Sonic Catering Band. A group that takes “the raw sounds recorded from the cooking and preparing of a meal and treats them through processing, cutting, mixing and layering”. So this wasn’t just nonsense Strickland made up as a joke, it’s also something he has years of experience with.
The culinary art collective in Flux Gourmet is made up of Elle di Elle (Fatma Mohamed) and her two assistants, Billy Rubin (Asa Butterfield) and Lamina Propria (Ariane Labed). Elle performs up front while Billy and Lamina cook and fiddle with sound equipment in the background. And after their performances at the institute, the audience thanks them for their art by participating in orgies with the group. The collective members sit down with the writer chronicling their stay throughout the film, letting us know what makes them tick and revealing that there are some rather twisted personal relationships behind the art they create together. Jan really latches on to some of the personal details Billy gives away and uses them to her advantage… stirring up Elle’s suspicion that Jan is trying to sabotage their collective for some reason.
But the most interesting character in this movie is one who has no connection to the sonic catering performances. It’s the character who is watching these things. The writer. Call him a “dossierge”, call him a “hack”, but whatever you want to call him, the fact is that Stones, played by Makis Papadimitriou, is probably the only character most viewers are going to feel any empathy for. That’s because a surprisingly large portion of Flux Gourmet’s overly long 111 minute running time is devoted to Stones pondering the mysterious gastrointestinal distress he’s suffering from. The pain in his stomach. His attempts to hide the sound of his farts and fecal expulsions from the collective. His fear of getting a colonoscopy from the very creepy and odd gastroenterologist Dr. Glock (Richard Bremmer). Stones is a regular person surrounded by weirdos.
Despite how strange and meandering it is, this movie does have sort of a watchable charm about it. Even though the sound mix was often incredibly annoying, at least on the screener I had access to. One minute you have to strain to understand the hushed lines being spoken by characters with thick accents, and the next your ear drums are being blasted by the noise made by the collective. The movie is so unusual, it’s even difficult to decide which genre to place it in, as is evident from the fact that many sources are referring to Flux Gourmet as being at least partially horror. I write about horror every day, and I didn’t see any horror in this movie. Apparently others have. One of Strickland’s sources of inspiration was This Is Spinal Tap, and comedy is probably what I would describe this movie as, although it was rarely laugh-out-loud funny. It’s certainly no This Is Spinal Tap.
It is a bizarre film that isn’t going to go over very well with most viewers (the two people I watched it with thought it was atrocious), but I’m sure it will find a small but appreciative audience. I’m not part of that audience. I didn’t mind sitting through Flux Gourmet once, but it’s not something I will ever feel like watching again.
IFC Midnight is giving Flux Gourmet a VOD and limited theatrical release on June 24th.