Flux Gourmet

THE CUTTING ROOM

THE CUTTING ROOM

Weird, wild and warped, Flux Gourmet is another bold addition to Peter Strickland’s blossoming CV. James Mottram speaks to the director and his loyal star Fatma Mohamed about shock value, fl orid dialogue and gastrointestinal disease

When Peter Strickland began work on his new fi lm Flux Gourmet, he threw it all into the proverbial cooking pot. Food allergies. Experimental music. Performance art. Power games. All seasoned with a dash of 1970s Euro-arthouse. The result is a wild and weird dish served up by its British director who has already cultivated a reputation for edgy fare in fi lms such as the Italian giallo-inspired Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and S&Mtinged The Duke Of Burgundy (2014).

FluxGourmet is set around an artistic residency, with a culinary collective coming together to record music from the sounds of

Peter’s friends: (from top) Berberian Sound Studio, Katalin Varga, The Duke Of Burgundy

food. As the group falls out, the performances get increasingly risqué. ‘I’m interested in shock value, and I’m interested in the hypocrisies around shock value,’ Strickland explains. ‘The wrong things often seem shocking; and the things that you should be shocked by are not seen as shocking. And it’s led right into this.’

Documenting these artists is the shy Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) who suffers from a particularly unpleasant gastrointestinal problem. ‘There’s a frustration I felt with how food allergies are dealt with in film,’ Strickland says. ‘Someone getting anaphylactic shock in a film is played as comedy . . . I guess I wanted to make an alternative and look at it more seriously.’ He pauses. ‘I don’t want to present myself as the Florence Nightingale of film. But at the same time, you want to contribute something to that conversation.’

Still, as the artists come to exploit poor Stones for their work, it gets increasingly scatological. ‘I was shocked a little bit,’ says Fatma Mohamed, holding her head in her hands when I ask how it felt when she first read the script. A star of Flux Gourmet (she plays Elle, one of the extreme artists), the Romanian-born actress has been in every Strickland film since his 2009 debut Katalin Varga. ‘At the same time, I was thinking, “only with Peter can I afford to do this”. I trust him.’

To prepare for the role, Strickland sent her a wealth of material to absorb: still images, album covers, videos and films including 1963’s French crime yarn Judex, one of the movie’s myriad cinematic influences. She also listened to Strickland’s work in The Sonic Catering Band, a 1990s musical outfit who were very much the inspiration for this film’s culinary collective. ‘I think it’s an homage to his friends who were doing this experimental music,’ she says. ‘He showed me some pictures too: Peter with a chef’s hat on!’

Having proved herself highly capable with Strickland’s wonderfully florid dialogue (none more so than when she played the department store clerk in his 2018 horror-drama In Fabric), this time Mohamed took the opportunity to work with a dialogue coach. For two days, they collaborated on Zoom to help the actress get her tongue around his words. ‘It’s not easy,’ she chuckles, softly. ‘Peter is always challenging me so much in all areas of English!’

Every detail is thought out to the nth degree. Take the title. ‘It’s not used in the film, in the same way that Reservoir Dogs is never mentioned,’ notes Strickland. ‘The flux came from reflux, of course, but also flux is the art movement [Fluxus] with Yoko Ono. Titles are really important but I don’t always get them right. Berberian: I hate that title now, but I like Flux Gourmet. It has that feel. You just want it to relate to what you’re seeing. And it’s not really a gourmet film.’

While Flux Gourmet invokes films like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom (1975) and Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) in its more extreme moments, it hasn’t led to mass walkouts, says Mohamed. At the UK premiere at last month’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. ‘They

were laughing a lot. I was so happy,’ she says. ‘You need a specific sense of humour, especially for this movie.’

Although it’s niche, Flux Gourmet does come with Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie (who appeared in In Fabric) playing the group’s flamboyant patron Jan Stevens. Then there’s Asa Butterfield as Billy, the collective’s youngest member. Well known for his role in Netflix hit Sex Education, Butterfield was suggested by Strickland’s casting director. ‘He’s interesting,’ says the director. ‘I was after this Joe D’Alessandro feel from the Warhol days, this very low-key passive guy who everybody wants to have sex with. He really found that.’

When they shot (under covid conditions), everyone lived and worked together in a house outside York. When they weren’t shooting, they played croquet on the lawn, while Butterfield and Papadimitriou entertained the others with their guitars. Strickland faced external pressures (he had just 14 days to shoot) so having actors on set that he knew helped enormously. ‘Especially Fatma,’ he admits. ‘We’ve done every film together. So there was a shorthand definitely. She really pushed herself on this one.’

Certainly that’s the case in the finale when Mohamed’s Elle goes full-on in front of a live audience. ‘She’s someone who lives off shock value, and she became addicted by it,’ says Strickland of the character. ‘Once you get people gasping in an audience, it’s quite a thrill.’ In his eyes, though, he’s not interested in shocking for the sake of it. ‘To me, I get shocked very easily. Extreme violence shocks me. I don’t like it. My films are not that violent at all.’ Violent, no? But provocative? Most definitely.

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Flux Gourmet is not the only film to find horror in gastronomy. To put you right off your next meal, Kevin Fullerton has cooked up some cinematic recommendations for those with very strong stomachs

PINK FLAMINGOS

In which drag icon Divine eats real dog poo from the ground to prove how disgusting she can be. It’s not big and it’s not clever, but it is one of the most famous scenes in underground cinema. John Waters, your crown as the king of trash remains untarnished.

LA GRANDE BOUFFE

A cause célèbre of its time, Marco Ferreri’s 1973 satire is the age-old tale of rich aristocrats and their prostitute pals who retreat to the countryside and gorge themselves to death with a feast of chicken legs, orgies and mash. A darkly funny and gruelling examination of decadence’s logical endpoint.

MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE

François Rabelais would be proud of Monty Python’s Mr Creosote sequence, a gleeful celebration of vomit and viscera. Creosote is a rotund upper-class grotesque who loves food and vomiting on his inferiors. His waiter in an upmarket restaurant overfeeds the glutton to literal bursting point, watching as his greedy guts explode over well-dressed patrons.

LITTLE OTIK

Jan Švankmajer’s food phobia is well documented, and it’s ever-present in one of his few feature-lengths, turning a pleasant meal between family members into a series of visceral close-ups as food is shovelled into mouths like innards into a threshing machine.

DAISIES

Vera Chytilová’s anarchic 1966 comedy-drama uses fine dining and food consumption for plenty of subversive fun, from satirising the rich to meditating on hedonism. But the film’s finest sequence finds its female leads chopping phallically shaped foodstuffs to mock their expectant male lovers. You’ll never look at a cucumber the same way again.

YEAR OF STORIES EVENTS TAKING PLACE THIS AUTUMN

MORE THAN 300 EVENTS ARE TAKING PLACE ACROSS THE COUNTRY AS PART OF SCOTLAND’S YEAR OF STORIES. HERE ARE EIGHT TO ENJOY AS WE LEAVE BEHIND THE SUMMER MONTHS

Arctic Ventures (credit Caroline Hack)

Left: The Force K6 – Indian Contingent Story (credit Miss J.L.Legge)

Tall Ship Glenlee (credit Museums Galleries Scotland)

GAIRLOCH MUSEUM’S FESTIVAL OF STORIES Gairloch Museum is hosting a wealth of storytelling events for all the family as part of their Year of Stories programme. Included on their roster is the broadcaster Roddy Maclean who’ll lead Gaelic walks, and artist Abe Locke whose illustrations have inspired a new animated short based on Gairloch fairy tale ‘The Gille Dubh’.

Gairloch Museum, 2–13 September.

ARCTIC VENTURES: FORGOTTEN STORIES OF SCOTTISH WHALING The Scottish whaling industry’s rich history is being placed in the spotlight at the Scottish Fisheries Museum. These forgotten stories will be brought to life through bespoke textile art, echoing the crafts and logs undertaken on whaling voyages, while local folk musicians will give a rousing performance of traditional whaling songs.

Scottish Fisheries Museum, Anstruther, 2 September – 27 November.

VOICES FROM DAVA MOOR Grantown Museum will celebrate the centenary of Maurice Walsh’s novel A Key Above The Door with an exploration of the novel’s location, Dava Moor. Includes a storytelling walk that will discuss the moor’s history and the people who lived there when Walsh was penning his best-known work.

Grantown Museum, Grantown-on-Spey, 9–11 September.

CARAIDEAN IS UILEBHEISTEAN (FRIENDS AND MONSTERS) Discover the power of Gaelic storytelling with free stories for children up to the age of eight, read by local authors. It’ll be an afternoon of games, songs and stories, and kids will be able to make their own spider to take home.

Caraidean is Uilebheistean (credit Pauline Mackay and Gwen Bowie)

THE FORCE K6 – INDIAN CONTINGENT STORY During the second world war, a small Indian force was stationed in the Cairngorms after fleeing Dunkirk. This multimedia performance tells their fascinating story as they forged friendships with local communities throughout the Highlands.

Newtonmore Village Hall, 20 September, 7.30pm.

FINDHORN BAY FESTIVAL In a unique celebration of Scotland’s stories, history, landscape and people, the Findhorn Bay Festival gives local communities a voice. Expect a musical exploration of Scotland’s coast and maritime heritage and hopes for its future.

Various venues, Findhorn, 23 September – 2 October.

WIGTOWN BOOK FESTIVAL It’s time to celebrate all things literary with the Wigtown Book Festival, which features a programme of more than 200 events. Speakers from the worlds of science, journalism, poetry and fiction will engage audiences in this thought-provoking season.

Various venues, Wigtown, 23 September – 2 October.

THE APPRENTICE’S TALE Enjoy a wide-ranging exhibition charting the real-life journey of the Tall Ship Glenlee from Sydney to Cape Town using the logbooks of apprentice Ernest (Andy) Andersen, who joined the ship’s crew in 1918 aged just 16. Providing a vibrant account of the events onboard, this is an evocative way to experience the high seas.

The Tall Ship Glenlee, Glasgow, until 5 December.

For more info on all Year of Stories events, scan the QR code or visit visitscotland.com/stories

BIG FEED

Travelling street food collective Big Feed have moved indoors (at least partly), with their Big Feed Kitchen’s recent opening on the ground floor of Glasgow’s Princes Square. Led by chef Michael Scott and initially running from Thursday to Sunday, they plan to build up to daily opening, with online ordering making it easy for the lunchtime crowd to do a quick pick-up for the office. Inspired by their Big Feed experience, the menu focuses on elevated versions of street-food classics: expect dirty burgers, loaded fries and bao buns, plus knickerbocker glories and cocktail trees for kicking off the weekend. (Jo Laidlaw) n big-feed.com