When I saw Peter Stricckland’s Berberian Sound Studio last year at the New York Film Festival, it felt like two-thirds of a potentially great movie. The film was sort of like Barton Fink but for foley artists and audiophiles rather than writers. Even though the last third tries too hard to be clever and squanders the film’s potential, Toby Jones turns in a good performance, the soundtrack by Broadcast (RIP Trish Keenan) is excellent, and I at least admire the craft of several scenes, which you can get a sense of from this trailer.
Here’s a synopsis for Berberian Sound Studio:
1976. A mild-mannered British sound engineer named Gilderoy (Toby Jones) arrives in Rome to work on the post-synchronized soundtrack to The Equestrian Vortex, a tale of witchcraft and murder set inside an all-girl riding academy. But as Gilderoy begins to work on this unexpectedly terrifying project, it’s his own mind that holds the real horrors. As the line between film and reality blurs, is Gilderoy working on a film — or in one?
Berberian Sound Studios will be out in theaters and VOD on June 7. In the gallery is the film’s official poster. After the cut I’ve included a song by Broadcast from the film.
[via Collider]
