If Jean-Luc Godard married Ke$ha, their progeny would make a film similar to Spring Breakers. To say it defies easy categorization is an understatement: this is easily the weirdest film to receive a wide release in recent memory. Filled with more topless women and alcohol than the imagination of a Jewish mother sending her first-born son to college, Spring Breakers works like gangbusters as an act of artistic provocation of the type found only in obscure galleries in Lower Chelsea.
The plot, such as it is, follows four girls (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) who desperately want to go on, uh, Spring Break. Unfortunately, they’re hard up for cash, so the latter three decide to rob a restaurant to fund their hedonistic dreams. The plan works, and their vaguely Floridian beach experience is delicious debauchery of the highest order.
Until, of course, they get arrested. The film then takes a decidedly darker turn as self-described hustler/rapper/bona-fide crazy person Alien (James Franco, who deserves all of the Oscars for this performance) bails them out and takes them in, showing them the dark underside of…SPRING BREAK.
The plot, however, doesn’t adequately describe what this film is. This is a film that bombards you with scene after scene of exploitative shots of women while Skrillex blasts in the background. A film where James Franco wears silver grills on his teeth that would make Paul Wall shudder. A film where Gucci Mane actually (in real life) falls asleep during a graphic sex scene. Is this absurdity a self-conscious act of criticism, a depiction of modern excess designed to horrify or is it meant simply to titillate? The film never gives a clear answer, tempting a viewer’s basest impulse with one hand while begging for overwrought, complex explanations with the other.
Director Harmony Korine’s sense of filmic reality and pacing are absolutely bonkers. Scenes drag on and on beyond anything approaching a human rhythm. Inane dialogue gets repeated so often that it becomes a hypnotic Gregorian chant: “Spring Break Forever” becomes the “shanti shanti shanti” of the Millenial generation.
Much has been made of Korine’s decision to cast two former Disney stars (Gomez and Hudgens), and I think it works well even beyond the level of meta-narrative. Gomez, the innocent, Christian one, comes off as equal parts vulnerable and repulsive. You hate her for her obvious hypocrisy, tinged with a noticeable element of racism and classism, yet realize that she has indeed fallen in too deep. Hudgens, meanwhile, delivers the best performance of the four female leads, with a glint of something disturbingly evil under the surface. Of course, the dialogue here isn’t Shakespeare, Mamet or even Teletubbies, so one might question whether they are deserving of such plaudits. Still, for this movie, the casting works.
This film also gives us James Franco in what is easily his most James Franco-esque performance of all time. Which is to say it’s absolutely insane. He delivers a mind-bending monologue about “All of his sh*t,” emphasizing seemingly random syllables to wondrous comedic effect. “I GOT scARface on rePEAT. SCARFACE ON REPEAT. Constant, Y’ALL!”
Of course, Spring Breakers isn’t perfect. While its best sequences elicit a mix of laughter, guilt and something more insidious, not every impressionist compilation of images hits. When a film traffics in excess, sometimes being merely “too much” doesn’t work.
Yet this isn’t meant to be a perfect film. It has scattered moments of Dada brilliance (watch out for the greatest Britney Spears sing-a-long in human history) while simultaneously packing in enough stupidity to make any such lofty critical pronouncements seem self-defeating. Ultimately, this review will seem foolish to a substantial chunk of the film’s audience who think this is idiocy of epic proportions, and that’s totally fine. But I think we ought to prefer a film that elicits such strong reactions than one that elicits none at all. After all, the possibility that Spring Breakers may be a profound contribution to the national discourse is more important than the alternative possibility that it’s an excuse for pervy men to see Disney starlets’ boobs.
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