The very idea of Harmony Korine making a film with the young
female stars of Pretty Little Liars, Wizards of Waverly Place and High School
Musical is where the cognitive dissonance of Spring Breakers begins. Are we
about to witness Korine taking a plunge into the mainstream, or is this film
his subversion of it? In fact, the whole of Spring Breakers is something of a
head-scratcher. I'm not entirely sure what Korine is trying to do with this
picture or what we're supposed to be getting from the experience. The film offers
a number of sublime, vivid moments as it follows its teen stars on a spring
break jaunt gone bad, but as the colourful end credits rolled I felt nothing
but relief.
Perhaps my dissatisfaction (sliding rapidly towards dislike)
with Spring Breakers has something to do with how tiresome I tend to find long
scenes of teenagers partying and having an "awesome" time. Korine
opens his film with slow-motion shots of bikini-clad women gyrating in front
the camera while young men stand around them, agog at the sight. Much beer is
swilled and the music, by Skrillex, is a cacophony. Although this doesn't look
like my idea of a good time, four teens in particular are desperate to make it
out to Florida to experience spring break for themselves. The one stumbling
block is a lack of funds, and so three of the girls decide to rob the patrons
of a diner and then pick up their devout friend (the aptly named Faith) before
driving off in search of good times.
Faith is played by Selena Gomez. I would give you the names
of her three companions too, but I can't for the life of me remember them. By
virtue of her religious background and her nagging doubts over the route
they're taking, Faith emerges as the one member of the group who has something
resembling a character (she also has the least screen time, which is a shame).
The parts played by Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine are
entirely interchangeable, and the film gives us no reason to invest anything in
their journeys. Their monotone, tentative performances don't imbue the parts with any
sense of life either; they're just four girls in bikinis, no more interesting
than the many anonymous girls milling around in the background.
For a while, at least, the filmmaking proves enthralling
enough to make up for the deficiencies of Spring Breakers. The diner heist is
one of Korine's major directorial coups, as he stays inside the getaway car
while we get glimpses of the girls' gun-toting antics through the windows, the whole
sequence being filmed in a single unbroken shot. Spring Breakers has been shot
by the hugely talented French cinematographer Benoît Debie, and his lurid,
abstract, neon-hued work is as striking here as it was in Gaspar Noé's Irreversible
and Enter the Void. This is undeniably a film that looks and sounds like
nothing else, and the dreamlike tone Korine aims for is sometimes intoxicating,
but it isn't long before the manner in which he has assembled this footage
becomes grating. The repetition of sound and image begins to pall before the
film is halfway done, and the film begins to feel a lot longer than it is.
"Spring break...spring break forever" is a frequent, drowsy refrain, and it occasionally did feel that this film was never going to end.
Ultimately, how one reacts to Spring Breakers may depend
largely on how one reacts to James Franco's contribution to it. He is the
film's star turn, throwing himself fully into the part of Alien, a ridiculous
caricature of a white rapper who has adopted every possible gangsta rap trope. After he bails the girls out of jail, they become seduced by the money, guns and
material wealth possessed by Alien, who proclaims "Look at all my
shit" as he gives them a guided tour of his opulent crib. Many people will
doubtlessly find Franco's portrayal of Alien to be hilarious and endlessly
quotable, but I found him tiresome and problematic in the way his over-the-top
performance quickly dominates the picture, while the girls seems even more
uncertain in his presence. While does fashion one particularly memorable
sequence around Alien and the girls – an oddly sincere and affecting rendition
of Britney Spears' Everytime – too often his indulgence of this character is
incredibly monotonous.
That monotony is finally what killed Spring Breakers for me.
The lack of narrative thrust isn't necessarily an insurmountable obstacle, nor
is Korine's failure to clearly elucidate the film's themes, but the crippling
boredom that I felt throughout long stretches of the film is fatal. Of course,
Korine has never been in the crowd-pleasing game, and his previous films have
often tested both the boundaries of narrative cohesion and the patience of his
viewers, but the hollow nihilism of his latest picture makes it a grim slog to
sit through. Is Spring Breakers celebrating, spoofing or indicting youth culture?
Is he empowering his characters or exploiting them? I don't know what Korine
had in mine with this film, but all I can see is another empty provocation,
even if it is a very pretty one.