Racking up the tension

Berberian Sound Studio is a film about a man who can’t get his expenses repaid and hurts a lot of vegetables — don’t worry, the RSPCV is on to it — although I suspect there may be rather more to it than this. I suspect there are hidden meanings. I suspect there are references to those nasty Italian giallo films of the Sixties and Seventies. I suspect it is, at least in part, a love letter to old, analogue sound technology. This is, in short, one of those arthouse tarts, always winking and hitching its skirt to those in the know. Yes, annoying for those not in the know — stop winking! Stop hitching your skirt! Have you no pride? — but I wouldn’t write it off all the same. It’s brilliantly creepy, whatever.

This is written and directed by Peter Strickland, whose first film, Katalin Vaga, a spare, unsentimental drama about the ramifications of a rape, won universal acclaim and quite a few prizes.