A movie shot on location at Niagara Falls, the middle of Paris and in a Jones Hill row-house received “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from audiences at last weekend’s Boston Independent Film Festival.
“The Whirlpool (Le Tourbillon),” a French-language feature with English subtitles, is the latest project completed by 47-year-old Dot filmmaker and visual artist Alvin Case.
The Stoughton St. auteur’s website explains, “ ‘The Whirlpool’ is an experimental, raw film project with a small budget and a large dose of fantasy, filmed with small hand-held cameras, including an iPhone. The production originated in e-mails between director Alvin Case and French actress Agathe Feoux. Their correspondence provided ideas for the storyline, the locations and possible themes.”
The time-hopping film with its largely improvised dialogue centers on a pair of troubled twenty-somethings, Victor and Agathe, two lost souls who fall for each other when they meet by the famous waterfall.
The 73-minute “Whirlpool” world premiered as an official selection at the International Film Festival Rotterdam earlier this year.
FilmKrant, a Dutch review site, referred to the central couple’s differing culinary tastes when it dismissed the film as “Neither arthouse gourmet nor multiplex bad calories, here are two characters in search of someone willing to sit down for a strange and unclassifiable cinematic meal.”
Evan Crean, a critic for the Boston-area Starpulse, also failed to appreciate Case’s Antonioni-style story-telling, but did compliment his steamy cinematography. Crean wrote, “He utilizes a romantic style which fits the film perfectly. Case excels at capturing Agathe and Victor’s love scenes in vivid detail; especially during the times they’re together at night. There’s an amazing silhouette of them making out by Niagara Falls, a dirty sex scene under red light at a motel, and a passionate lovemaking sequence lit by a fireplace.”
Despite the mixed reviews, “The Whirlpool” has been booked for a festival in Portugal in July and perhaps will be shown later at ones in Canada and Italy.
Case’s next picture “Montauk” will be in English, an experiment, he says, “to see if we could shoot a decent film just with an iPhone.”
“Montauk” blends favorite themes of conspiracy, time travel, memory, and psychosis. Shot in the fall of 2010 entirely on Apple’s iPhone 4, the work is the final chapter in Case’s “Fugue State Trilogy,” which includes last year’s “The Geneva Effect” (in Italian) and “Force Majeure” (no dialogue).
Though “Montauk” is set in New York, several scenes were shot in Dorchester, including the opening one of a 747 flying over Pope John Paul II Park.
“Montauk” was made with friend and frequent collaborator Will Jeffers, a Mattapan filmmaker, who Case says “was my assistant director, sound man and key grip. He did everything but make the meals, and he’s a very good cook!”
As a warm-up for “Montauk,” Case and Jeffers entered FilmRacing’s 2010 “24 Hour Film Race,” an international competition to create short films in just 24 hours from the time entrants receive an e-mail detailing a theme and a prop which must be included in the film.
Their 3 ½ minute “Quitclaim” was shot entirely in Dorchester and starred Jeffers as a serial killer who taunts detectives by bragging he lures pretty realtors to their death in foreclosed properties. The eerie film included the requisite theme of “something to sell” and a phonebook as a prop. Like all his films, “Quitclaim” (vimeo.com/alvincase/quitclaim) was edited at Case’s home using Final Cut Pro.
For more on the artist’s movies as well as his paintings and installations, go to alvincase.com.
