Peter Strick­land takes a bite out of the haute cui­sine world in the Flux Gourmet trailer

Peter Strick­land is a film­mak­er of tex­tures, train­ing his cam­era like a micro­scope on the inter­wo­ven fibers of tex­tiles (as in his haunt­ed-dress hor­ror sto­ry In Fab­ric) or the shim­mery wings of but­ter­flies (as in sap­ph­ic lep­i­dopterol­o­gy romance The Duke of Bur­gundy). His break­out fea­ture Berber­ian Sound Stu­dio looked at food in this same way, por­ing over the water­mel­ons and cab­bages muti­lat­ed in the course of foley effect record­ing; now, Strickland’s turn­ing his atten­tions back to the gustatory.

This morn­ing brings the first trail­er for his lat­est film Flux Gourmet, its imagery fried until gold­en-brown and then slathered in a vari­ety of gravies. We join a ​“culi­nary col­lec­tive” mak­ing per­for­mance art from food­stuffs, their avant-garde take on music gen­er­at­ed with sauces, veg­eta­bles, and cuts of meat in place of instruments.

The new­com­er to this strange cre­ative clique is Stones (Makis Papadim­itri­ou), whose gas­troin­testi­nal unrest strikes the company’s stars — Bil­ly Rubin (Asa But­ter­field), Elle di Elle (Strick­land reg­u­lar Fat­ma Mohamed), and Lam­i­na Propia (Ari­ane Labed) — as a poten­tial gim­mick for their act. While they pres­sure him into par­tic­i­pat­ing despite his mis­giv­ings about his weak stom­ach, ten­sions mount with the tow­er­ing direc­tor Jan Stevens (Gwen­do­line Christie), who won’t let her author­i­ty be usurped by her underlings.

At this ear­ly stage, it’s unclear whether Strickland’s sat­i­riz­ing the art world, the culi­nary world, or any­thing at all — his work mix­es arch humor with a sin­cere fas­ci­na­tion for the out­ré, clear in the care with which he shoots his sub­jects. In claus­tro­pho­bic close-up, a magen­ta-col­ored smooth­ie can look like the pri­mor­dial ooze out of which human­i­ty slith­ered, and a cran­ber­ry com­pote can turn into gore. He’s seem­ing­ly able to make any­thing look like anything.

The film’s pre­mière at the upcom­ing Berli­nale will be some­thing of a home­com­ing from Strick­land, who opened his fea­ture debut Katal­in Var­ga in Com­pe­ti­tion there back in 2009. IFC has already scooped up dis­tri­b­u­tion rights for the US, and sales for the UK are cur­rent­ly under­way for what’s all but guar­an­teed to be one of this year’s genre high­lights. Bön appetit!