Flux Gourmet

Peter Strickland explores the sound of food in a highly original satire of performance art.

Food for thought: Asa Butterfield, Fatma Mohamed and Ariane Labed

This is a film that feels to have been made with the utmost confidence. That's good news for admirers of its writer/director Peter Strickland but it has been apparent for some time that this auteur (that is surely the right word) makes films so individual and so strange that many viewers will dislike them utterly. In this instance Strickland’s film studies a band of performing artists who work together and have taken up a residency to develop their art. For this they have gone to a country establishment known as the Sonic Catering Institute which is run by Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie). The trio who submit themselves to her regime are headed by Elle di Elle (Fatma Mohamed) and with her are Lamina Propria (Ariane Labed) and Billy Rudin (Asa Butterfield). Also in residence are a gastroenterologist, Dr Glock (Richard Bremmer), a technical assistant (Leo Bill) and the man who tells the story of what happens during the three weeks at the end of which the trio should be ready to give a proper performance. This man, a Greek named Stones (Mikis Papadimitriou), has been hired to keep a record of the participants and their progress. He devotes himself to this despite suffering from stomach problems which cause flatulence and lead to him seeking help and a full diagnosis from Dr. Glock.

That is the unusual set up in Flux Gourmet and it adds to the film’s sense of the bizarre that the art of our trio consists of blending together sounds that arise from preparing and cooking a meal with music of an electronic nature. The film has been described as a satire about way-out art and pretentious artists and the imperious Jan Stevens certainly fits in with that. For many the very idea of what the trio are working on may sound suitably preposterous in itself. However, we do perhaps need to take account of the fact that what we see them doing is akin to the real-life endeavours of the Sonic Cooking Band which was created in 1996 and went on to appear at the John Cage Festival in Bratislava in 2011. That band had two founders and one of them was Peter Strickland himself!

Knowing that does raise questions as to the extent to which Strickland's film is satirising this form of art even if some of the exercises set up for the trio by Jan Stevens (those in which they play out imagined trips to a shop for example) appear absurdly irrelevant. It is easier by far to recognise how adroitly Strickland tells his tale always playing on stylisation so that realism is not an issue. The look of the piece is great and that owes much to the contributions of Tom Sidell (photography), Fletcher Jarvis (production design) and Saffron Cullane (costumes). As for the casting, that is spot-on in each and every case and, whatever one makes of the band’s sounds, it is evident that Strickland has a great ear when it comes to music on the soundtrack.

While some degree of satire is undoubtedly involved, the centre of interest here is to be found in two other elements, namely the sheer aesthetic appeal of the film and the way in which the outlandish story acts as a metaphor for the power games so readily recognisable as reflecting real life. It is Elle di Elle who states early on that every collective needs a leader, thus establishing her determination to control the trio while, as head of the institution, Jan Stevens may mentor the group but also wants to have the final say in the shaping of their work. Furthermore, when Stones fearfully awaits the diagnosis of his condition from Dr Glock (who given the features of Richard Bremmer becomes perhaps the film’s most memorable creation) the good doctor clearly delights in keeping his patient in suspense for as long as possible.

Another interesting aspect of Flux Gourmet is Strickland's refusal to play up the flatulence suffered by Stones for comic effect. Instead of offering humour at the character’s expense, Strickland adopts a sympathetic approach and it seems likely that Stones represents the voice of sanity in a world of weirdos. That makes it all the more disturbing when very late on in the film Stones is sucked in to share the attitude of those around him. This happens after a scene that is set up in order to make viewers respond in shock to just how far these artists will go. But whether or not such a gross episode is justified is questionable.

Despite their differences, it seems natural at this stage in Strickland’s career to compare him with Peter Greenaway, another outlandish filmmaker who blends genuine art with disturbing material in decidedly stylised and challengingly bizarre narratives (if certain scenes are not far removed from, say, The Draughtsman's Contract, 1987’s The Belly of an Architect also comes to mind in connection with the portrayal of Stones). Ultimately, Flux Gourmet does leave me puzzled to a degree that limits its effectiveness, but it also contains much that one can genuinely admire if you are prepared to go with it. Plenty of people will reject it out of hand but for Strickland, an artist creating his own world film by film, Flux Gourmet will certainly not be a work that will lessen his standing.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Gwendoline Christie, Fatma Mohamed, Richard Bremmer, Ariane Labed, Makis Papadimitriou, Leo Bill, Britt Gartner.

Dir Peter Strickland, Pro Serena Armitage and Pietro Greppi, Screenplay Peter Strickland, Ph Tim Sidell, Pro Des Fletcher Jarvis, Ed Mátyás Fekete, Music Phil Canning, Costumes Saffron Cullane, Sound Tim Harrison, Dialect coach Mary Howland, Food stylist Annie Nichols.

Bankside Films/Head Gear Films/IFC Films/Lunapark Pictures/Red Breast Productions-Curzon.
111 mins. UK/Hungary/USA. 2022. US Rel: 24 June 2022. UK Rel: 30 September 2022. Cert. 15.