Flux Gourmet

I'm not sure how I got here, probably it being a Peter Strickland film. Who doesn't love that unnerving grainy tone he delivers. This though might push even me a little too far. It's weird. Obviously. The setting is the Sonic Catering Institute. A artistic workspace where a collective have gathered to work with a crank call receiving, pompously controlling, increasingly bizarrely dressed resident director and a somewhat submissive writer, photographer, documentarian with some gastric issues. It's not easy to nail down quite what everyone's purpose is. There's a lot of pretension. A lot of awkwardness. Nobody seems to like one another all that much as they do workshops, endure nightly dinners and sleep in grotty dorms. The collective in residency, made up of Elle, Billy (Asa Butterfield) and Lamina are an art troupe band. Using food as a device for performance art. It's as much about the sound though, with sound sources wired up through vats, pots and blenders, as Elle in the first performance writhes naked in what looks like blood. This is one of the more palatable expressions. I'd like to say it's interesting, well acted. That the narrative is compelling and the characters engaging. None of that is true. What I can say is I like slightly confounding art house indulgence and this ticks that box. It looks good too. Not every frame by any means, but there are several arresting scenes that grab your senses. A Strickland film is rarely an easy watch. He's a director intent on challenge and you'll have to work to enjoy this. If you like something that makes your brain wonder and whirl at what you're watching and why you're watching it though, then Flux Gourmet is worth a taste.

Peter Strickland is a mad man. If you are familiar with his work you'll know what I mean. His nuanced brand of vivid absurdism seems to have a tangible scent and taste to it, where every aspect is designed as sensory overload. This makes him a unique talent despite his overt influences - influences that stretch from giallo art house horror to early Lanthimos (even borrowing one of the Greek auteurs' main players, Ariane Labed for this latest effort). Velvet and satin textures dripping in ebullient color are the fetishistic clues that bring the viewer in on the subtle, often impenetrable themes that are at play. In the case of Flux Gourmet, what is most crucial is the investigation of psychological kinks which stoke the fires for artistic expression. Cronenberg also recently had something to say on the matter, only he used the body as an artistic vessel instead of the mind and its perversions. Though I admire Strickland's wicked little plots, I so frequently notice the fingerprints of others, plastered all over their shells, to where I have trouble appreciating them as original entities. Fortunately, there's always a certain aesthetic and thematic freshness exuding from the cinematography and writing that prevent them from becoming derivative.

"Weird" at the service of a higher cause I can roll with. "Weird" as a stand alone aesthetic usually leaves me cold.

"Flux Gourmet" is a gross and -- for me at least -- an even somewhat incomprehensible film about performance artists. I don't even know -- is "food sound art" even a thing, or was it meant to be a joke? Somewhere in this film is a satire about pretentious people, but it's buried under an off-putting preoccupation with the workings of human bowel systems. I've had a colonoscopy. I don't need to relive someone else's.

This is the kind of movie whose advertising features pull quotes from critics using words like "uproarious" and calling it equal parts brilliant horror and scathing comedy. I must have been watching an entirely different movie.

The best I can say about "Flux Gourmet" is that it has a bold and confident vision, and the director is clearly committed to it. But that's really part of the problem.

Grade: C-

Is Flux Gourmet a very dry straight faced joke about pretentious modern art?

Or is it a perfect example of pretentious modern art?

I'm tending towards the latter.

Recommended if you want a movie that takes the idea behind the baked beans scene in Blazing Saddles and stretches it to feature length. Otherwise, if you really must watch a Peter Strickland movie, find The Duke of Burgundy instead.

The oddity of the pace and concept wares off about an hour in and feels like it marches on forever without much of a progress or change. Too much repetition, gags go on far too long & at six cycles with little new to add it feels like a bad sketch that drug on too long.