Berberian Sound Studio

Heads of cauliflower have never been so terrifying! A shy English sound engineer with an apparent fixation on his mother finds himself in the very unwelcoming environment of a recording studio full of sexually potent Italians. While you’re waiting to see if the narrative takes the direction of a psychosexual thriller or gore horror, an unclassifiable ode to the absorbing power of giallo films (of which we see nothing but hear everything) begins to unfold and as the minutes pass, you realise that ebb and flow between real horror and merely playing at it will persist until the end. ___ Due to the fact that is gallop a kind of giallo turned on its head with the picture inside and the sound out, we are forced to put our imaginations to work much more than when watching a standard horror production. All of the sounds are amplified, including the footsteps and the clatter of the typewriter and the projector, which is set in motion again and again by a mysterious hand clad in a black glove. The hand of the killer? If so, who is actually being murdered? The vocal cords of tormented actresses? What is the murder weapon? Sound? And mainly, who is the killer? Gilderoy, the only one who perceives what the sounds actually convey and gets so caught up in them that it ceases to be clear who is projecting and who is being projected? Or is he simply not a sufficiently confident character (see his inability to “commit” a crime with a sexual connotation) to persist on the film strip? The protagonist gets his voice (or, more precisely, his sound) only after one of the women is fully under his power and he becomes a true SOUNDMASTER. He finally gains control over his soundtrack. ___ As a screenwriter, Strickland perhaps relies too much on suggestion and being thoroughly enigmatic. With respect to the smoothness of the transitions between scenes (the ominous SILENZIO sign serves as a punctuation mark) and atmosphere, however, this strictly interior plunge into the clutches of madness can boldly be compared to, for example, The Cremator (the only exterior scene, a completely unexpected surreal interlude, is perhaps the most shocking moment of the film). The sound studio’s staff also shares with The Cremator an exceptional appetite (instead of wreaths and coffins, freshly butchered melon is offered) and a sense of humour as black as the smoke from a crematorium (though in terms of content, films such as The Conversation and Blow Out would be more suitable for comparison). ___ By shifting the emphasis from the visual to the aural (and thus demystifying what makes modern horror movies so scary), this is a very original, idea-rich work that, with headphones on, provides an unforgettable psychological experience that evokes memories of the viewer’s first experience with Lynch. Appendix: if you are interested in the captivating intermingling of fiction and reality, I also recommend watching the in many ways related Spanish cult film Arrebato. And by the way – did you also get the impression that Christoph Waltz plays the director Santini? 90% (14/04/2015) (less) (more)