13/02/2022 - BERLINALE 2022: Get ready – indigestion meets power games meets Spinal Tap in the British director’s new outing

When a culinary collective starts to clash during their art residency, a hapless writer named Stones (Makis Papadimitrou), hired to report on their process, finds himself in the eye of the storm. But as his gastric problems pique the attention of the collective’s leader (Fatma Mohamed), he is no longer allowed to safely look in from the outside. We spoke to British director Peter Strickland about his Berlinale Encounters-screened new flick Flux Gourmet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Peter Strickland
film profile].

Cineuropa: Were you exacting some kind of revenge on journalists by inflicting all of these terrible things on poor Stones?
Peter Strickland: Oddly enough, the journalist is not mocked here. I have a lot of sympathy for him. Stones would like to write his own stuff, but like all of us, he needs to make money. He writes what he is told to write – he’s like the electronic press kit guy. He is in the background, taking production notes. These people, they are invisible – that was interesting to me. I guess the people I am mocking the most here are the artists.

Well, they’re asking for it sometimes. You seemed interested in the sounds that food can make already in Berberian Sound Studio [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. It never crossed my mind to listen to what I am eating, but maybe it’s time to start paying attention.
It sounds good, doesn’t it? It came from way, way back. In 1996, I was in a band called The Sonic Catering Band. We recorded cooking, amplified the sound and manipulated it. We did this for quite a few years, then we stopped. I used some of it in Berberian Sound Studio, and now it set the stage in this film. Maybe I wanted to finally sell some records.

As someone who doesn’t cook, you made me wonder if this is because I’m lazy or because, as a woman, sometimes you feel like you have to.
This is the first generation experiencing this liberation from the kitchen – older women were essentially slaving away there. I was wondering if someone who has been cooking all her life, and didn’t really want to, would be happy for a younger woman to come in, or would she be jealous? You could call it a satire, but this thing was kind of real.

I didn’t want to make it too clear-cut, though; I wanted to make it messy. You have one character whose mother never cooked, and another one who says both of her parents did. I didn’t want to turn it into a slogan, but to provoke a discussion, hopefully. It was the same with the relationship between an artist and a financier. I hope it’s not clear which side I am on. I am a referee – that’s my job. With a nice whistle, of course.

When it comes to eating, parts of the process are openly celebrated, and others remain hidden. Which, come to think about it, doesn’t really make any sense.
Shocking just for the sake of shocking is not interesting to me. But by provoking the audience, you make them think about all these taboos. Say someone is suffering from a celiac disease or irritable bowel syndrome. These things are very, very private and embarrassing. You are ridiculed. When you make a film about it, you are ridiculed as a filmmaker as well.

There is a lot of suffering in the film, not just of a physical nature. How do you make sure there is this emotional connection, even despite all the craziness?
A lot of it comes from the acting. Fatma’s character is a liar, basically: that’s what she does. She is lying about which school she went to, about her anaphylactic shock. How do you make her likeable, even though she is so deceptive? The thing is, I am drawn to bad characters in the cinema. Take all the people in The Godfather or Withnail & I, or Flux Gourmet’s Dr Glock [played by Richard Bremmer]. I would hate them in real life, but I love watching them on screen.

With the collective itself, there is something adorable about how ridiculous they are. They even get out of bed at the same time!
That’s bands for you. It’s an exaggerated version, but it’s like with dogs and their owners. They start to walk the same way and have the same facial expressions. Maybe they don’t get out of bed at the same time, but there is this rhythm that you just share.

I guess I like films about bands. I love This Is Spinal Tap, which was a big influence, and Control [+see also:
trailer
film profile], about Joy Division. Here, they argue over a flanger, which is a minor thing, but it’s indicative of all these power games. You see them all the time – in politics, in creative arts. Fatma’s Elleis like a parasite. She is an opportunist who will cling onto Stones like a barnacle, exploiting his suffering and using it to shock people. “Something so private, sacrificed for the sake of art,” he says in the film. It was hard to shoot that scene [of a public gastroscopy]. You are very, very exposed, as a performer and as a character, opening yourself to the unknown. Your greatest fear as an actor and as a director is being laughed at, but you can’t move forward if you don’t take that risk.