I've been hit by a sudden and unexpected cold and have been off work today, feeling sorry for myself and watching old Stewart Lee shows and horror movies. One of these was 'Berberian Sound Studio', which I'm not really sure how I feel about just yet.
Spoilers ahead BTW.
It's been on my to-watch list for a while as it has Toby Jones in, and I'm quite a fan of his – particularly his stellar turn as Lance in the criminally underwatched BBC4 show 'Detectorists'. He is great in this, but the real star turn is the creators love of the process of making films. They are clearly in love with the a certain style and a lot of the time the film feels like a tribute or a satire on that; I'm not sure they ever really decided which it was. There's lots of close-ups on peoples eyes, lots of fetishistic high-def close-ups of the corpses of the vegetables used to provide the sound effects to the (seemingly) outrageous bloodfest on screen. We never see any of the film that's being dubbed, but it's clear that it's a sensationalist flick rather than the high art that the director seems to think it is.
Toby Jones character is very interesting. Adrift in a country that he can't understand, culturally or linguistically, unable to claim his expenses back from the clearly inept and bankrupt company, and drifting ever further into a blurred world between the reality and fantasy of the job/film. He starts to see himself in the rushes, cuts of a documentary he's been working on at home creeping in, and ultimately footage coming round of his entry into the studio at the start of the film. It all gets a little child-running-down-a-hillat this point – clearly alive and exciting, but seemingly unable to control where it's going or how messy the end of the sprint will be.
The first half an hour is really enjoyable, a bit slow, but interesting and dark. The second half hour threatens to deliver on that, but the third seems to lose interest in itself a bit and it all tails off rather. I think this may be more to do with where I thought the film was going to go rather than any failing on the film's part, but it needed more investment from me than I could give. That said, I did really enjoy the hour and a half I spent watching it and will definitely come back to this one again when I have less of a headcold fug hanging over me. Whether it will be better or worse for that remains to be seen...