KUSO

What is KUSO? A question without an answer. The directing debut by the celebrated US musician Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus falls into the category of films that bring half the audience reverently to their knees, while the other half runs away screaming. Four different stories, gently rubbing together, tell of the few survivors of an earthquake in Los Angeles. That has to be enough for the dramaturgical superstructure, because KUSO makes every narrative swelling explode like his characters’ pus blisters. Shock and disgust weigh heavy in this surrealist, scatologically rare candy-box, realized as a mixed media frontal attack: bodily fluid and secretions flow over the screen, Tim Heidecker’s head looks out from the toilet, funk music legend George Clinton cures someone with a phobia about breasts using a bug that grows out of his anus, and colorful, furry aliens with screen faces debate about the artistic value of a TV program, where a penis is being bullied by a metal device: “This is art. This is shit. Art is shit.” KUSO itself is a Japanese slang word for shit. The soundtrack is provided by new compositions by Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and Aphex Twin.