Berberian Sound Studio
(2012) 92 Min.
Rated: NR
Country: UK
Director: Peter Strickland
Stars: Toby Jones, Antonio Mancino, Cosimo Fusco, Fatma Mohamed
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★☆
An Englishman flies to Italy to work on the sound mix of an Italian giallo film.
Synopsis:
Gilderoy (Jones) is a mild mannered sound engineer who is hired by an Italian director named Santini (Mancino) at the Berberian Sound Studio to help with his giallo film The Equestrian Vortex. He is guided by Francesco Coraggio (Fusco), the producer.
Initially Gilderoy tries to talk to Francesco about reimbursement for his flight from England to Italy and Francesco directs him to the secretary, who claims it’s not her department.
Gilderoy starts to work on the film, learning that it’s a horror film. Santini shows up and prefers his film to never be referred to as a horror.
Gilderoy reads letters from his mother at his apartment about a birds nest with chicks. He works on the film sound, and finds Francesco increasingly controlling. He finds one of the session artists, Silvia (Mohamed) who plays Teresa, to be kind. Francesco is rough with her and warns Gilderoy to stay away from her.
Gilderoy again asks about reimbursement for his flight and is met with disdain. Francesco considers it an insult and says that a man who loves his art would do it anyway and that there are plenty of people who would do it for free. Gilderoy also asks the secretary who says a man named Luigi deals with accounts, but he’s also hard to get to.
Gilderoy finds the images he’s made to see from the film disturbing and at one point refuses to make the foley sounds for a scene where a witch has a hot poker inserted into her vagina.
After a talk with Francesco where he threatens to quit, Santini arrives to ask Gilderoy about it, but he claims it’s a misunderstanding. Santini feeds Gilderoy a grape and says he must swallow the seed as it’s customary where he’s from. Santini declares Gilderoy a changed man.
Gilderoy is doing foley work with leaves and crickets. Silvia stops by and asks him how he’s getting along with Santini. She warns him to be more forceful or he’ll never see his money. She also warns him not to trust Santini.
Gilderoy calls accounts and talks to Luigi who claims that he called the airline and no flight is on record. So he says they cannot reimburse him for a flight he never took. Gilderoy gets angry and increasingly unhinged at this.
One day while in the sound booth Silvia shows up saying she needs to scream. She confesses that Santini used her and kept touching her despite her protests. She says that she will exact revenge on him and bring him to his knees.
The next day Santini and Francesco find all of Silvia/Teresa’s reels erased and scattered about the mixing room. They hire a new girl named Elisa to redo the voice work for the character of Teresa.
While he sleeps, Gilderoy hears someone trying to break down his door. He opens it to find no one there and a film playing in the sound room of himself getting out of bed just moments ago.
The film Gilderoy had worked on previously begins to play. It is a nature film. Suddenly church bells are heard and Gilderoy is in his bed reading a letter from his mother describing how bird chicks were killed at his home.
He works on the new recordings with Elisa, but at night he sleeps and a dark figure in black tries to stab him. He struggles with the figure. We then see him watching a film version of himself as when he first came to the studio with Francesco, his words instead are now in Italian.
Gilderoy is fixing a machine and Elisa appears and recites lines from a letter to Gilderoy from his mother about the chicks dying in the nest.
Elisa is in the recording booth but her screams are horrible and horse. Francesco pushes Gilderoy to punish her and fix it, so he puts a harsh sound in her headset. Elisa cries under the torture and finally takes off her headset. She storms off abandoning the project.
The power goes out and Gilderoy gets out some candles. The projector is running and the voice of Theresa from the film can be heard praying over organ music. Gilderoy is left staring at the screen, to contemplate the hell he is in and the creature he has become.
Review:
Berberian Sound Studio is basically at it’s core an existential crisis as horror. A man who seems selected to do a job, praised while doing his job, then realizing that he’s living a waking nightmare from which he can’t escape. He’s a prisoner and becoming one of them.
The unique thing about this film is that the majority of the tension is built through sound and dialogue. Though the shots of the studio are atmospheric and well done, the audience almost never leaves the studio or apartment and is trapped along with Gilderoy. Yet in this limited space we, too, can feel the tension. It’s built slowly through dialogue and pushed further with sound and music.
This film is love letter to both giallo films and sound design. How complex it is to mix the sound for a film is fully illustrated. It’s a bit magic and enthralling, but it isn’t exactly fast paced. This film will appeal to those who have a love of cinema and how it’s made. It’s slow with a bit of tension, but deserves a look. This film is more of a sound experience than anything that can be put into words properly.