MOVIE REVIEW: Spring Breakers

Title: Spring Breakers
Director: Harmony Korine

Harmony Korine is a divisive figure. To put it mildly. The director has made his name by specialising in the peculiar and the downright bizarre, becoming something of a cult poster boy in the process. Spring Breakers may accordingly appeal more to his established fanbase, if only cos they’ll be more prepared for the litany of confusion that they’re about to see. Not that it’s a particularly strange film in and of itself – it’s certainly more mainstream, and even recognisable than some of his other films. But it does require patience, a certain degree of indulgence, and a huge suspension of disbelief, which may be easier if you know what’s coming. Mostly, it’s two parts disaster to one part trip.

Loosely summarised, Spring Breakers is the story of four friends – Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), and Cotty (Rachel Korine) – who head to Florida to partake of the annual beer-swilling student holiday. Faith is, as her name suggests, at least partially religious though this doesn’t seem to stop her hanging out with the other three juvenile delinquents. Unbeknownst to her, they rob a bar in order to drum up the cash to pay for their trip, little knowing it won’t be their last skirmish with the law. While in Florida, a drugs bust leads to a brief sojourn in prison for the four, until their bail is posted by a local rapper and self-styled drug dealer named Alien (James Franco). He has his own nefarious plans for the girls.

It’s worth pointing out, first and foremost, that the opening 45 minutes or so of this film are diabolical. It’s less a film than an extended music video, with all the gratuitous nudity, orgiastic behaviour, and alcohol-fuelled excess you could hope for. It’s also largely set to Skrillex and bathed in iridescent neon lights, so you can decide for yourself whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Personally, it took all my self-restraint not to leave inside the first half hour. There’s no plot, no characterisation, no narrative – the lead characters make vague, dreamy, pseudo-existential observations about their state of mind and how desperately they want to go on a bender during spring break, eventually deciding that something old-fashioned like law and order shouldn’t stand in their way. They remain distant and undeveloped for most of the film; the only discernible character arc being afforded to Gomez as Candy and even at that, it mainly consists of her implicit attempts to reconcile her faith with the temptations around her. In this regard, Gomez is actually quite impressive. She has such a doe-eyed face that it’s difficult not to feel for her, especially when things start to unravel and she does an about turn on the hedonism around her. The director is particularly thrifty when it comes to his wife’s character as Cotty is the most thinly-sketched one here, and Candy and Brit are mostly comprised of adolescent male fantasies and gun signs.

The second half does, however, improve upon the first. It’s likely that it seems better due to the sheer awfulness of what has gone before, but there is dialogue and some fleeting conversation. Franco brings a touch of charisma to the screen. His character is outrageously implausible – he owns a veritable arsenal of guns and runs a drug ring with naught but two skeletal twins as back-up – but his rendition of Everytime by Britney Spears may just be the highlight of the film. There are repeated references to Spears, actually – as though her fallen-from-grace parable is some sort of metaphor for the lipgloss criminality on display. The girls assist Alien in pulling off some heists on unwitting spring breakers, donning matching pink balaclavas to become the neon-tinted foot soldiers of a psychedelic fantasy. It escalates to a conclusion that’s either shocking or stupefying depending on your point of view, but the girls remain paper statues in a discotheque sky and the production is so vacant and watery that it’s difficult to engage enough to care.

Korine has certainly made a pretty film – not just for his leads, on whose looks and sexuality the entire appeal of Spring Breakers is predicated. There is something to be said for the looseness of the eye and the persistently glossy style, but all this artistry exists in a narrative wasteland. It isn’t poetic or involving and it doesn’t offer us any memorable insights or incisive commentary. It seems more an exercise in fantasy and titillation, which may indeed be the point, though it doesn’t make for the brightest of responses. If you can imagine Picnic at Hanging Rock made on acid, set in Florida, and stripped of all its resonance, symbolism, and poignancy – in fact, all its artistic merit – then you wouldn’t be too far wide of the mark. And may the cinema gods forgive me for making that comparison.

Review written by Grace Duffy

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