Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.

Director:

Peter Strickland

Writer:

Peter Strickland

Stars:

Toby Jones, Susanna Cappellaro, Antonio Mancino

9 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Toby Jones	...	Gilderoy
Tonia Sotiropoulou	...	Elena
Susanna Cappellaro	...	Veronica
Cosimo Fusco	...	Francesco
Suzy Kendall	...	Special Scream Performance
Layla Amir	...	Equestrian Girl
Antonio Mancino	...	Santini
Hilda Péter	...	Auditionee
Guido Adorni	...	Giovanni
Chiara D'Anna	...	Elisa
Lara Parmiani	...	Chiara
Eugenia Caruso	...	Claudia
Fatma Mohamed	...	Silvia
Katalin Ladik	...	Resurrected Witch
Salvatore LI Causi	...	Fabio

Storyline

A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.

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Plot Keywords:

1970s | actress | chocolate | foley artist | sound recording | 

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official Twitter

Country:

UK

Language:

English Italian

Release Date:

14 June 2013 (USA)

Also Known As:

Studio ihografiseon Berberian

Filming Locations:

Three Mills Studios, Three Mill Lane, Bow, London, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warp X, Illuminations Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Goofs

At the very beginning of the film, Elena calls Francesco to announce Gilderoy's arrival at the studio. Although the film is set in Italy, when she picks up the phone a continuous dial tone is heard, which is normal for the US or UK; however, the actual dial tone would have sounded very differently in Italy, a country where the phone system has a very distinctive and non-continuous dial tone (consisting of a 425Hz tone with a duration of 0.6sec followed by a 1 second pause, followed by a 0.2 sec tone then a 0.2 sec pause, repeated in a loop until the first digit is dialed).

User Reviews

A pretentious mess

'Berberian Sound Studio' is a film about an English sound technician (Toby Jones) who is used to creating sound effects for children's TV shows, who travels to Italy to work on a horror film. We follow him as he grows more and more homesick and as he gradually becomes hopeless.

There isn't much in the way of acting in this film but Toby Jones is a very talented actor and does perform well here. The other actors certainly are not poor, they give decent performances but none of them are particularly memorable.

The script is so basic and undeveloped you can practically see the writer shrug and say 'that'll do,' by the end. The first half hour is interesting because you get to see how sound effects are made and the whole dubbing process in general. After 30 minutes this gets tiresome however and I know it is supposed to be cyclical and seem never ending for Toby Jones, but it is so obscure you don't really care. When a film gets to the point where it thinks it's smarter than everyone else it becomes a pretentious mess, leaving you thinking they could have written that same concept with a more understandable and entertaining script. It deliberately tries to confuse you by adding pointless scenes here and there but in the end you realise the film only lasted an hour and a half but seems to last three hours.

Overall, this was quite disappointing. I really wanted to like this film; I had read so many great reviews on it and was looking forward to seeing it. Unfortunately it made me question the judgement of so many film critics that I follow.