What do you get when you cross Thirteen, Sugar and Spice, and Drive?
Wait—minus the black humour, the powerhouse performance by Ryan Gosling, and the heartbreakingly honest script penned by 14-year-old Nikki Reed based on her own experiences with sex and drugs. If you guessed Spring Breakers, starring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, and Rachel Korine, you’d be right.
The work of writer-director Harmony Korine, whose previous credits include an eclectic mix of critically acclaimed indies, Spring Breakers defies categorization.
From the very first scenes of the movie, which feature the suggestive licking of popsicles, topless co-eds, and bikini-clad girls and sweaty frat boys smoking from a bong, Korine makes it clear that this is not another sweet and innocent teeny-bopper flick.
Friends — Brit (Benson), Candy (Hudgens), Cotty (Korine), and Faith (Gomez) — desperately want to escape to Florida for spring break to get away from their mundane lives. Lacking the funds for their vacation, the wild and wreckless Brit and Candy decide to rob a diner at gunpoint, with Cotty driving the getaway car.
When Faith, a devout Christian only connected to the girls through a lasting childhood bond, finds out how her spring break is going to be financed, she is reluctant but agrees to go along.
The four party hard in Florida until they are arrested for trashing a hotel room. When rapper and drug dealer Alien (Franco) bails them out of jail, things really start to get out of control, and Faith decides to go home. The other three find themselves involved in Alien’s criminal activities, with Brit and Candy taking great pleasure in the violence and the money it brings.
What were presumably supposed to be breakout roles for Disney tween queens Gomez and Hudgens and Pretty Little Liars’ Benson, the trio, Gomez in particular, shows poor acting chops. Even worse, not one of the four female stars has a shred of cha- risma, and together they are about as interesting as a spring break spent helping your grandparents clean their basement.
Maybe even less so, as the latter might yield some unexpected treasures and a laugh or two at your parents’ old photos That’s why when Franco appears on screen about half an hour into the film, the audience can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Sporting gold teeth, cornrows, and an impressive Southern drawl as Alien, Franco is simultaneously charm- ing, eerie, and vulnerable.
Franco delivers an off-beat but precise performance that is captivating, and his command of the screen reminds the audience what acting and screen presence should look like. His periodic and slow repetition of the words “spring break” throughout the film is perfectly creepy, providing a steady rhythm for the action.
Altogether, Spring Breakers is confused, over-the-top, and leaves many questions unanswered, the most compelling being what has made Brit and Candy so jaded, yet so glad, to become an integral part of a trashy gangster’s violent life.
But what makes the movie interesting, despite an unrealistic plot and sometimes painfully slow pacing, is its visual aesthetic: its mix of grainy, shaky takes; So-Cal vibe; shots of the vibrant, colourful sun and sunsets; and costumes that take full advantage of the faded ’80s beach styles.
The film is a visual delight, while the juxtaposition of guns, money, violence, blood, and drug use make it hauntingly beautiful.
Add to this a forceful, bass-filled soundtrack produced by Cliff Martinez (Drive), Gucci Mane, and dubstep wonderkid Skrillex, and you get a film that is vulgar, tacky, and cheesy, but visually and aurally striking. In fact, it’s precisely these qualities that make it so.
If Spring Breakers offers any social commentary or has a deeper meaning, I didn’t catch it, but that doesn’t mean the movie isn’t worth watching. The film confusingly, though stylishly, blurs the lines between mediums and genres and feels very of-the-moment. Part music video, part video game, part film, Spring Breakers might just be a whole work of art. And that’s worth the price of admission.
Vanessa Del Carpio
Staff Writer
