'Beware hipsters', it says somewhere on a wall, very early on in the film. I'm guessing that these two youngsters are hipsters, because I don't know much about the phenomenon. It appears there are hipsters in Miranda July's 'The Future' (2011), but other than that I had to look it up elsewhere on the net; they were already around in the '40s of the previous century. The fact that there is a group of friends that is, ahem, falling apart in this film, make it believable that those words formed a true writing on the wall...
Beyond that, there's lots of other associations that came up during 'Alyce'. Adam Wingard's 'A Horrible Way to Die', Stuart Gordon's 'King of the Ants', 'Edmond' and 'Stuck' and Lucky McKee's 'May' and 'Sick Girl' for instance, and during the scenes with the drug dealer I couldn't help but think of (De Palma's) 'Scarface' and 'True Romance'. And even the comedy series 'The Office' came up when the two girlfriends were out on the town, getting wasted after work - I'm out on a limb there, I know...
That first half hour was a lot of fun: Jade Dornfeld and Tamara Feldman are radiant, act well, there are fun dialogues and there's the right amount of tension and chemistry going on. On top of that it was very nicely filmed. But after that, it's a bit of a bumpy ride. Luckily, every time things are starting to drag on, there's something funny or interesting to make up for it. The speech of the drug dealer wasn't all that interesting though, and the masturbation scene felt very staged, but I shouldn't complain about that last one, really...
The fun and gory finale was a good choice: all pretensions hacked to pieces, and... 'What?' That's right; what?
A big 7 out of 10.
Beyond that, there's lots of other associations that came up during 'Alyce'. Adam Wingard's 'A Horrible Way to Die', Stuart Gordon's 'King of the Ants', 'Edmond' and 'Stuck' and Lucky McKee's 'May' and 'Sick Girl' for instance, and during the scenes with the drug dealer I couldn't help but think of (De Palma's) 'Scarface' and 'True Romance'. And even the comedy series 'The Office' came up when the two girlfriends were out on the town, getting wasted after work - I'm out on a limb there, I know...
That first half hour was a lot of fun: Jade Dornfeld and Tamara Feldman are radiant, act well, there are fun dialogues and there's the right amount of tension and chemistry going on. On top of that it was very nicely filmed. But after that, it's a bit of a bumpy ride. Luckily, every time things are starting to drag on, there's something funny or interesting to make up for it. The speech of the drug dealer wasn't all that interesting though, and the masturbation scene felt very staged, but I shouldn't complain about that last one, really...
The fun and gory finale was a good choice: all pretensions hacked to pieces, and... 'What?' That's right; what?
A big 7 out of 10.