Flux Gourmet

A spoof of performance art and foodies (crossed up) and totally hilarious. The actors play it straight which, unlike Christopher Short's films, made it even more funny to me. There were so many little things that made me giggle...their obsession with a flanger, the OTHER collective (and their name) and the way they stealth around, the patron's head wear, their confessions and dialogues with a flatulent writer and the silly French names for odd foods (that I don't know if they are real or not). Clearly the other reviewers who rated the film didn't get it or were expecting something else but I thought it was just grand.

And this film comes down on the wrong side.

I'm OK with weird. I loved Strickland's In Fabric, and was hoping for something equally interesting. Unfortunately, he seems to have thought "I've already turned it up to eleven; what if I turn it up to thirteen?"

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a group of performance artists who indulge in sonic cookery, and who are granted a residence by someone who is as unhinged as they are (in case we miss this, her deranged nature is hammered home by her bizarre headwear. Especially in bed). There's also a sub-plot about flatulence (these may be the most sophisticated fart-gags ever committed to film, but they're still fart-gags) and a rectal examination that also turns into performance art.

Terrapins, a box with knobs on, a rather icky seduction, pretentious references to ancient Greek literature, latex cat-suits (everyone always travels with these, in case they need to indulge in a little burglary, don't they?)

The resultant mish-mash leaves one confused and deeply unsatisfied.

And I would've throttled the doctor MUCH earlier.

"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-

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.

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.