Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

If you are fascinated by Italian horror movies from the late 70's or the early 80's Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio offers you a real treat; an ironical but also sympathetic meditation on film-making, chauvinism and creative imagination. A British sound engineer arrives in an eerie film studio in Italy. A seedy film is about to be made, mostly by good looking ladies being placed in booths, where they scream their lungs out. The challenge of the Brit is to transform this into movie magic, but one problem here is that the gentleman is used to making nature documentaries and the tasks he is commissioned to do abhors him. Strickland has plenty of fun showing us how the cheesy Italian horror movies might have been made - the most ingenious tricks are used (involving an assortment of vegetables) to create just the right sound of smashed bones or mushy flesh. The contrast between the bumbling Brit and the chauvinistic Italians of course plays on cultural stereotypes, but well, this is not a tract on national characteristics. The funny thing about Berberian Sound Studio is of course that it focuses on a much overlooked aspect of movies - sounds - using images that are both offbeat and sometimes eerily evocative, even when they border on the nonsensical (I must admit that the end could have been skipped). Weirdos, you'll like this one.