Flux Gourmet

Ludicrous but serious, simultaneously high and lowbrow, this shock art satire is well made but stomach turning. Turning viewers' senses and sensibilities inside out, Peter Strickland creates discomfort with persistence, mixing sexual debauchery with defecation. Like a warped Wes Anderson movie, his characters and settings are perfectly crafted but look pulled from different time periods, creating an aesthetic clash. Inevitably, all of the characters have personality clashes as well. It leads to chaotic horror, not in the monster or serial-killer sense, but in terms of the disturbing images, ideas, and relationships the film sears into our minds.

Case in point: While Stones is quietly chronicling the sonic collective's time at the institute, he's fighting back a roaring need to fart. It's a horror of its own: He's trapped in a small bunkhouse with three other people where the bathroom is next to the shared bedroom. While viewers are saved from hearing Stones release a mighty wind, they're brought along on his journey as he tries to flush out the medical reasons his bowels are so unsettled. Strickland is poking viewers, asking us why gastrointestinal distress is a taboo subject. Artistic provocateur Elle de Elle (Fatma Mohamed) sees Stones' digestion misery as having artistic merit and incorporates it into her work in the most unsettling of ways. Early on, her put-upon bandmate Lamina Propria (Ariane Labed) walks out of an uncomfortable dinner, saying "I couldn't take it in there." Hear that as Strickland's warning: This culinary exploration is both inedible and indelible. In other words, file Flux Gourmet under Things You Can't Unsee.