便通美食家 Flux Gourmet(2022)

简介：

在一个研究烹饪和饮食的研究所，一个团体发现自己卷入了权力斗争、艺术化的仇杀以及胃肠道疾病之中。

演员：

影评：

1. 

   Title: Flux Gourmet

   Year: 2022

   Country: UK, Hungary, USA

   Language: English, Greek, German

   Genre: Comedy, Drama

   Director/Screenwriter: Peter Strickland

   Cinematography: Tim Sidell

   Editor: Mátyás Fekete

   Cast:

   Fatma Mohamed

   Gwendoline Christie

   Asa Butterfield

   Ariane Labed

   Makis Papadimitriou

   Richard Bremmer

   Leo Bill

   Rating: 5.6/10

   

   Title: Club Zero

   Year: 2023

   Country: Austria, UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Turkey, USA, Qatar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

   Language: English, French, Chinese

   Genre: Comedy, Drama, Thriller

   Director: Jessica Hausner

   Screenwriters: Jessica Hausner, Géraldine Bajard

   Music: Markus Binder

   Cinematography: Martin Gschlacht

   Editor: Karina Ressler

   Cast:

   Mia Wasikowska

   Florence Baker

   Ksenia Devriendt

   Luke Barker

   Samuel D Anderson

   Sidse Babett Knudsen

   Amir El-Masry

   Gwen Currant

   Andrei Hozoc

   Sade McNichols-Thomas

   Amanda Lawrence

   Elsa Zylberstein

   Mathieu Demy

   Sam Hoare

   Camilla Rutherford

   Lukas Turtur

   Keeley Forsyth

   Rating: 7.7/10

   A brace of films pertaining to alimentary expressions and choices, yet, “bon appetite” is an inapt wish for us bums on seats because neither is tailored to gratifying foodies. Instead, both films pose a challenge to confront our conventional ideas towards our victuals.

   Peter Strickland’s 5th fictional feature FLUX GOURMET is an artsy elaboration on power, dominance and manipulation via a far-out sonic culinary exhibition which is almost unheard of. Meantime, Jessica Hausner’s 6th feature-length film CLUB ZERO introduces a granola method of diet, that is perversely extended to a suicidal starvation to test today’s well-bred young generation’s limit on faith.

   As much as an affinity to Strickland’s innovative aesthetic has been grown in Yours Truly - that quaintly lepidopteran, sapphic transgression and fastidious fetishism in THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY (2014) is so rare a testimony to unbridled auteurism in the 21st century cinema - it is with a dispirited heart for me to report that FLUX GOURMET is quite hard to embrace, even for Strickland’s fans.

   The story goes like this, Elle di Elle (Mohamed), her two assistants Lamina Propria (Labed), also her lover, and Billy Rubin (Butterfield), a step-son figure to her, are performance artists who are granted a coveted one-month residency at an art institution supervised by Jan Stevens (a hoity-toity Christie). A self-effacing journalist Stones (Papadimitriou) is hired to record the trio’s creation process and their soi-disant “sonic catering” performances. As per usual, Strickland’s preoccupation with the sound effects is allotted a goodly canvas to be baked into the trio’s performative reveries. Yet, everything feels more like a noise-fest and cringy showboating.

   Divided into three chapters following a physiological course from the mouth, the stomach to the bowel, FLUX GOURMET tosses together the internal strife among the trio, the power one-upmanship throw-down between Elle and Jan Stevens (bickering over “flanger” sounds like a conspiratorial nod to “Friends”, where Phoebe invents something called “left phalange” in the series’ finale to hilariously stop a plane to take off), the shallow sexual favors, to effect a labored relational dynamism which ends up too tedious and unremarkable for audience to take pleasure in. While its arcane usage of sonic technicalities, the absurd performances (when it goes scatological, it hits the rock bottom), plus a sweepingly and insistently detached emotional wavelength, all add insult to injury. It invokes no mystery in its wayward grandstanding of a so-called “artistic collective”. Only a meek and wistful Stones - ailed by his malfunctioning alimentary canal, chagrined by his flatulent epiphenomenon and belittled by a saturnine on-site doctor (Bremmer), engaging in a self-examining introspection with his choice diction and taciturnly fights back against the dread of mortality, only to be blindsided by the gluten-intolerant discovery - generates some breezy levity which is characteristically in paucity in Strickland’s films.

   CLUB ZERO spirits audience away to an English-speaking European elite school where Hausner’s antiseptic mise en scène, pastel palette, geometrically pleasing composition, conspire to beguiling hygge atmospherics where generational discord and miscommunication between children and their parents is perniciously brewing.

   Miss Novak (Wasikowska, exuding her irrational zeal with perfectly self-contained charm and suasion) is a new teacher in town and introduces a “conscious eating” course appealing to the impressionable students, even the principal Miss Dorset (Knudsen) gladly subscribes to the diet Miss Novak firmly espouses, in the beginning, that is to say. Driven by a pious devotion, eventually Miss Novak feels fit to broach a radical proposition to the most committed students. However, there is an oceanic divide between eating moderately and stopping eating at all, aka, the titular “club zero”, which would eventually be inculcated into the minds of some of the students by a relentless Miss Novak, who is already a member of the club.

   Among the devotees, Fred (Barker), blessed with a terpsichorean flair, is discontent being left behind by his parents who are currently devoting their work in Africa; Ragna (Baker) is the most zealous adherent, who probably practices bulimia even before Miss Novak’s course; a weight-concerned Elsa (Devriendt) undergoes a long way to overcome the temptation of food, and once she has done it, nothing can hold her back; and the most pitiful one is Ben (Anderson), a smart, healthy boy who doesn’t even believe “conscious eating” in the first place. Yet, succumbs to inferiority complex (raised by a single mother, he is not from a rich family like others), peer pressure and a strong resolve to nab a future scholarship which can be helped by the course’s credits, Ben is a late-but-not-lesser believer, and his slip is the most instructive case of how to brainwash a non-believer by any radical ideas.

   Hausner and her co-scribe Bajard coax out a cogent psychological cause and effect (Miss Novak’s persuasion, the strained family relations) relative to the students’s reactions, actions and interactions, plus how confirmation bias can aid and abet the misinterpretation of one’s “faith”, whereas their parents remain helplessly none the wiser. Only if any of them would’ve arranged a tête-à-tête with their sensitive and competitive child who willfully refuses to eat, one life could’ve been saved.

   While CLUB ZERO continues Hausner’s penchant for confronting and scrutinizing faith on its most inexplicable and fanatical terms (LOURDES, 2009; AMOUR FOU, 2014), apart from her rapier-like mindset, her own distinctive style, both visually (her variegated minimalist design and set can be easily recognized and appreciated à la Wes Anderson-lite) and aurally (Markus Binder’s strangle percussive score swells like an otherworldly incantation that casts a hypnotic spell on the audience), also come into sharp being. Hausner has obviously paid her dues. And to answer all the supporters wondering where will be her crowning glory? The film’s final line “But you need to have faith!” sound like a perfect response.

   referential entries: Strickland’s BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (2012, 5.9/10), THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY (2014, 8.0/10), IN FABRIC (2018, 6.8/10); Hausner's LITTLE JOE (2019, 6.6/10), LOURDES (2009, 8.0/10).

   

2. 

   一向钟情于邪典题材的英国导演彼得·斯崔克兰德（Peter Strickland）在《邪典录音室》《公爵蝶恋花》和《霓裳鬼影》后，去年又炮制出一部新作《变通美食家》。影片入围了柏林电影节“遇见单元”，并登上了不少年度最佳电影榜单，证明了这位风格化的导演依然备受关注。不过，喜欢重口味的邪典片影迷这次可能会稍微失望了，相比他先前的几部作品，这部新作不是纯粹玩类型实验的复古铅黄片，而是混合了更严肃及复杂议题的荒诞喜剧。

   影片讲述一个研究声音饮食的艺术机构，定期邀请一些实验表演团体进驻为观众表演。一个三人表演团入驻后，其领队与艺术机构负责人产生意见分歧，由此引发了一系列不断升级而失控的事件。作为题旨的“声音饮食”，相信是全片最引人瞩目的部分，不过导演并没有就此花去太多笔墨，仅安排了两场表演（一场是赤身裸体涂满食物汁液，另一场是涂抹粪便的表演）来打发观众的好奇心。在我看来，三人模拟购物以及表演后与观众在休息室狂欢的（隐晦）情节更能激发我的兴趣和想象力。

   

   和《邪典录音室》类似地，导演选择了一个第三者的视角来观察实验表演团，以及艺术机构的内部运作机制。这名记录员有趣地成为了针锋相对的双方之间的调和者，平衡着两边力量的对抗，最后更自愿成为表演团体的成员。这些人物依然保持着导演以往作品中夸张、偏激、玩世不恭的漫画塑造手法，其中表演团体与机构负责人之间的对抗愈发显得荒诞。然而，导演在荒诞的喜剧结构里不断抛出严肃的话题：艺术家创作与资助者的关系如何平衡，艺术家应否接受资助者的建议而调整创作方向，艺术脱离了资本是否还能存在，资本是否能主宰艺术创作等等。

   虽说这不再是《邪典录音室》或《霓裳鬼影》那种铅黄片，但是导演在视听上仍有不少亮眼的创意，食物烹饪过程中的声音展示，向帕索里尼致敬的意识最让我欣赏（早晨散步的古典氛围、用巧克力酱模仿大便）。然而，这回导演的野心太大，一边要处理表演团体和机构负责人对抗的线索，一边又要展开记录员治疗肠胃病的情节，叙事焦点分散到太多话题上，从餐后演讲中打破女性刻板印象的观点，到团队成员与机构负责人意外展开的母子恋，再到身体恐怖的刻画等等，逐渐偏离了艺术与资本的核心主题。