Director: Harmony Korine
Stars: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine
What did I just watch….?
Spring Breakers is about some college students who rob a bank so they can afford to go and party on Spring Break. However, they get caught and end up being bailed out by a rapper and drug dealer who then brings them in on his life of decadence.
So this film…yeah. It’s a critique of the excesses of youth culture and the glorification of partying and boozing etc married with an arthouse style of directing that blends some hazy visuals with audio cues to create a dreamy, hallucinatory state. But I don’t think it’s a very good film. I get what the director was trying to accomplish and everything is taken to such an absurd level, I mean at one point James Franco performs fellatio on the barrels of two guns, that it becomes bizarre. Yet while it’s critiquing this time of culture it also exploits it, and so the point is lost. I can imagine a lot of people will come into this movie thinking it’s a straight up sex comedy or a raucous party film.
But basically it’s just a film about a bunch of nasty people who encounter one another and that’s about it. It’s not very fulfilling. There’s only one character that provides a counterpoint to the rest of the film, and that’s Selena Gomez’s Faith. Yet she disappears from the film and I feel that if this wanted to actually be a critique then they should have shown some more of Faith and what happened to her, to contrast what happened with the other girls.
As it is I’d say to avoid this film. The point the director is trying to make isn’t a particularly revolutionary one and the way he goes about it is confusing and not entertaining.
