FLUX GOURMET (February 2022)

   

FLUX GOURMET

(February 2022)

“Cooking and performing is always a hazard.”

Peter Strickland is in the shops, going through the aisles and tossing performers he’s worked with in the past into his shopping trolley--Gwendoline Christie and Richard Bremmer and Leo Bill from In Fabric, Fatma Mohamed from all of his feature films and the “Cobbler’s Lot” segment from The Field Guide to Evil--then adding Ariane Labed, Asa Butterfield, and Makis Papadimitriou to the lot.

He then breezes through the checkout and rushes home so he can whip up yet another luscious Technicolor dish for us with Flux Gourmet, perhaps the oddest effort of his that I’ve seen yet.

Christie plays Jan Stevens, Director of the Sonic Catering Institute, which sponsors “culinary collectives” (otherwise known as Sonic Caterers) on a monthly residency basis, to actively “…encourage the artistic pursuit of alimentary and culinary salvation.”

Described by one of the film’s characters as “feckless faux provocateurs”, Sonic Caterers are basically performance artists working to find the “sonic and performative potential” of foodstuffs.

Or something like that…

Like I said, it’s the oddest film I’ve seen from Strickland yet…

“To taste their shock is to be controlled by it.”

Flux Gourmet follows the residency of the collective led by Elle di Elle (Mohamed), and the tension engendered from the conflicts between Elle and, well, everybody. (Weeks into their residency and Elle still hasn’t decided on the band’s name.)

Not to mention the “escalating threat” from The Mangrove Snacks, another collective that was denied residency…

There’s also a (possibly life-threatening) gastrointestinal illness and some scatological hijinx somewhere in there as well…

“I do wonder sometimes if you’re perpetuating an archetype of epicurean toxicity with all this culinary hysteria. I don’t want to give the public the impression we’re espousing any kind of dysfunctional alimentary ideology.”

Absurdly humorous with some oddly touching moments sprinkled throughout, Flux Gourmet doesn’t really have the horror-tinged streaks found in Berberian Sound Studio and In Fabric, but it is, nonetheless, clearly a Strickland piece, with his aesthetic fixations and preoccupations plain to see.

So if all that sounds like something that might agree with your cinematic palette (and stomach), then by all means, dig in…

“When I see joy and abandon, my mind always reverts to this: why can one stomach be so free and another can’t?”

(Flux Gourmet OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

IN FABRIC (September 2018)

   

IN FABRIC

(September 2018)

“A purchase on a horizon, a panoply of temptation. Can a curious soul desist?”

“I’m just looking, thank you.”

“The hesitation in your voice soon to be an echo in the recesses of the spheres of retail.”

I don’t know about you, but if a salesperson walked up to me with that spiel, I would not hang about to hear more…

Particularly if I’ve already seen the creepiest TV advert ever* for the shop’s latest sale…

“You who wear me will know me.”

Peter Strickland’s In Fabric kicks off with Sheila Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a lonely mother just trying to find love and intimacy who happens to visit Dentley & Soper’s, leaving the premises with the singular “Ambassadorial Function Dress”--a chiffon and silk and satin number in, get this, artery red--in stock.

A dress that happens to be, gulp, haunted.

“The very purpose of this seasonal retail occasion is to expunge. Returning what has already left the Ladies’ Fashion Boutique of Dentley & Soper’s Trusted Department Store goes against the nature of things.”

A haunted (or in some cases, cursed) fashion item featuring in a horror film is nothing new, of course.

Some that come quickly to mind: Kim Yong-gyun’s Bunhongshin (The Red Shoes), Won Shin-yeon’s Gabal (The Wig, AKA Scary Hair), the more recent Bad Hair (from Justin Simien, which features a “possessed weave”), and Elza Kephart’s Slaxx (killer jeans, natch).**

And while some of those titles lean more into the comedic side of their horror-comedy combo, there’s still something undeniably unnerving about having something that you’re wearing--that, by its very nature, is something that rests snugly against your body--have a malevolent mind of its own, even if there are some laughs mixed in with all of the chills.

Trust Peter Strickland to toss his hat into this particular horror movie ring…

“But your dismissal of such a prestigious consumerist festivity leaves me bereft.”

If you’ve seen Berberian Sound Studio (and if you haven’t, please, please, please do yourself a favor and seek it out), you’ll know what I mean when I say that Strickland is the kind of director whose work is definitely experiential. Like David Lynch, the way he combines visuals with sound and music is alchemical in nature, disturbingly bewitching.

Just like that artery red dress.

And while there is a ribbon of drily absurd humor that flows through its runtime, In Fabric also drapes us with an unsettling, inescapable tone, almost like that artery red dress settling down all around us, brushing up relentlessly against our bare, viewer’s skin…

The inner, hidden workings of the retail world have never been quite this surreal and creepy on film***…

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a dress.”

* Courtesy of Julian House, who also worked on Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio.

** For the record, I’ve seen all of these, except for Slaxx.

*** The closest I think we’ve come to something like this is Kim Sung-ho’s Geoul Sokeuro (Into the Mirror), in which bizarre goings-on mar the intended re-opening of the shopping mall, Dreampia. Though to be frank, that film doesn’t even come close to the unsettling strangeness of Strickland’s vision of Dentley & Soper’s…

Comics, though, are another matter entirely…

Eerie retail hijinx may be found in Christopher Cantwell and I.N.J. Culbard’s Everything, from Dark Horse comics, edited by the one and only Mother of Vertigo, Karen Berger…

Parting Shot: If you find yourself enamored with Strickland’s aesthetic, then I implore you to also check out his definitely not horror piece, The Duke of Burgundy, as well as his contribution to The Field Guide to Evil, “Cobblers’ Lot,” loosely based on the Hungarian folktale, “The Princess’s Curse”.

(In Fabric quad and OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)