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In Flux Gourmet, Peter Strickland’s most lighthearted, and also strangest, movie yet, a trio of “sonic catering” artists — creators whose musical output comes from harvesting the various sounds emanating from food and kitchen equipment — begins a residency at the Sonic Catering Institute. Their process is overseen by the organization’s haughty, severely gussied-up director, Jan (Gwendoline Christie). They’re also being observed by a shy journalist named Stones (Makis Papadimitriou), whom the institute has hired as a kind of human monitor. (Stones is also the film’s narrator; he details, in addition to what he sees, the upset stomach that’s only gotten worse since getting here, threatening to mess up his cool-headed objectivity.) 

The movie maintains a lopsidedly deadpan sense of humor while satirizing the joys and (mostly the) difficulties of artistic collaboration. The head of the trio, Elle di Elle (a blazing Fatma Mohamed), is a tyrannical personification of the difficult-artist type as she calls the shots around her comparatively submissive co-conspirators (Asa Butterfield and Ariane Labed) and aggressively denies any suggestions made by Jan for their well-attended avant-garde performances. (Elle looks ecstatic crawling around in one performance drenched in viscous red liquid in what is meant to critique carnivorousness, and in another where she gives Divine in Pink Flamingos a run for her money by slathering herself in feces, trying not to gag, in front of perplexed onlookers. Her bandmates sit in the back, tinkering passively with their tools and trying not to draw any attention to themselves for fear of Elle’s wrath.)

With Strickland’s distinctive emphasis on sound and texture in his movies — he accentuates them with a delicate, almost fetishistic touch, with additional influence coming conspicuously from 1970s European horror and erotic films — I tend to prefer him when he’s working in horror, the genre best suiting the sense of disquiet permeating all his movies. (Horror gives it someplace cathartic to move toward.) 

Flux Gourmet, Strickland’s first outright comedy, isn’t his best. But it’s delightfully weird, and continues propping up something I’ve always appreciated about him even when I’ve struggled to love what he puts out. When you watch Strickland’s movies, it’s obvious, almost from the jump, who’s behind the camera — and that you’re going to get something if not easy to fall for then at least riskier and more interesting than most movies you’ll see that year.