“Flux Gourmet” (MA) *

IT has been suggested that filmgoers attuned to writer/director Peter Strickland’s wavelength will find this horror-laced satire a “savoury delight”.

It isn’t for all tastes. Ludicrous but serious, simultaneously high and lowbrow, sensitive folk may find it turning their stomachs. Coprophagy isn’t for everybody! 

In the US and Canada, “Flux Gourmet” earned $3780 from 19 theatres in its opening weekend, $1397 from six theatres the following weekend and $4387 in its third. 

Those numbers are eloquent. ‘Nuf sed, I reckon. I watched it in an otherwise empty cinema straight after watching “The Quiet Girl” among a very modestly sized audience. 

People are still prepared to shell out a few shekels to sit among strangers in a darkened cave, having their senses allayed by all manner of responses brought before them by creative people whom they’ll very unlikely ever actually meet. That’s the movies – thee and me filling our sensory expectations for reasons that sometimes don’t get fulfilled!

Wot’s it about, do you ask? A group takes up residence at a remote artistic institution, run by an enigmatic director. Tasked with recording the day-to-day rituals of experimental performance artists, known for their process of “sonic catering” (where they extract disturbing sounds from various foods (yeash!), an outsider discovers that he is slowly becoming part of their collective himself.

I enjoy my tucker with the best and I’m not the world’s worst cook. I didn’t find “Flux Gourmet” agreeable as either food or cinema. Creating discomfort with persistence, mixing sexual debauchery with defecation, its disturbing images present chaotic horror resulting from its ideas and relationships. I came away from it feeling its beginning had made a promise which its finish had left unfulfilled.

At Dendy