Title: Spring Breakers (2013)
Director: Harmony Korine
Cast: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley
Benson, Rachel Corine
Watching a Harmony Korine film can be a grueling experience, don’t
know how many of you out there have seen Korine’s first film Gummo (1997), but
it is such a raw and crude film that it can prove to be too much for some
people. But then, the thing about Korine’s films is that most of the time they
mix the real with the fictional until the lines blur and you don’t know which
one is which. There’s lots of improvisation to his films, magical moments are
provoked and end up happening in front of the camera, take for example a scene
in which one of the girls puts a gun in James Franco’s mouth and he begins to
start giving the gun a blow job. That scene was improvised! On Gummo we meet
these two hill billy teenagers whom we follow through a day in their life, in
their neighborhood. Man, let me tell ya, you never saw America look so ugly!
You know how most films will film in these squeaky clean beautiful locations?
Well, not Korine, for Gummo he went to the ugliest, scummiest parts of America
to capture a side of American life you probably don’t want to see. Which is why
Korine’s latest, Spring Breakers, surprised me a bit. I mean, first thing I
thought when I heard about this movie having girls in bikini from beginning to
end was how Korine had sold out! I was like, damn, he finally broke down and
did a commercial film! Which is like the furthest thing on my mind when I think
of an ateur like Korine, but there it is. Spring Breakers. A "commercial film" that made its budget back more than three times over!
Spring Breakers is all about these four girls who are bored
of college and want to have fun, they are ready to cut loose and live life to
the fullest; squeeze it for all it’s worth. Basically they want to fulfill
every hedonistic desire they can think of. So they do what any penniless
college girls would do, they rob a restaurant, take the money and run. For a
while, their plan works, but then things take a turn towards the dark side. Will
they end up living the American Dream or the American Nightmare?
Spring Breakers was a confusing film for me because the
marketing made it look like one of those dumb movies about young kids partying
like animals, you know, like Project X (2012) 21 & Over (2013). I personally
don’t like these types of movies; don’t
know why, I guess they feel overtly stupid to me somehow. So I kind of let
Spring Breakers slip by me because of this preconception of the type of movie
it might be. But deep down inside I thought to myself that Harmony Korine was
not the kind of guy who’d sell out like that. I mean, his movies were always so
shocking, like a solid punch to your gut! They aren’t pretty things, they focus on the dark
side of humanity. Some of his films, like for example Mister Lonely (2007) are
incredibly surrealistic, feeling like something Alejandro Jodorowsky might have
directed. So yeah, it surprised me then that Korine was suddenly doing this
movie filled with sunsets and beaches and beautiful people in bikinis. So was
Korine betraying himself with Spring Breakers? I get what he did here. Korine's films never made money. They were always art house films deemed too shocking or weird for mass consumption, but you know how the movie world is; directors have to walk that fine line between making art and making money if they want to stay in the game. And so girls in flourescent bikinis was a smart move on Korine's part; yes my friends, sex will always sell. But did Korine sell out all the way? Hell no!
The deal with Spring Breakers is that from a distance, it
looks like your typical party film about young people getting drunk and doing
stupid things. And for a while, this movie is about that. These girls go into
the heart of Spring Break in Florida and go all out, they smoke their weed, do
their coke, have sex like maniacs, basically these girls party like animals,
but like most films about excess, there’s the dark side. The side where life
shows you that going over board has its limits and that having your brain on
stupid mode for so long will blind you to the consequences of your actions. I
liked how the film starts out in a beautiful place and slowly descends into a
very dark place. We are talking about young girls who like the dangerous side
of life, they like to test their limits, they want to see how far they can go
without getting in trouble. Hell, these girls are described as having “demon
blood” in their veins! It’s no wonder they end up being soul mates with ‘Alien’
the drug dealing character played by James Franco.
And speaking of James Franco, wow, what a performance. I
have to say the guy really surprised me with this one. I mean, I’ve always
admired his work but honestly? To me this is his best performance yet, he
really created a character here. When the girls fall into Aliens hands, you
worry for their safety. Alien exudes true evil, they kind of evil that comes
from a person who understands the hypnotic influence of words, money and power!
He brought to mind a similar character played by Gary Oldman in Tony Scott’s
True Romance (1993), remember that one? The crazy white pimp who thought he was
black? Alien has this out of control quality to him that’s scary, but also get
the vibe that the guy is smart, he knows what to say and how to say it,
especially to impressionable young girls. So be ready for a bravura
performance, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a nomination come Oscar time! In
embodies his character so well it reminded me of the Daniel Day Lewis transforming
performance in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs
of New York (2002). This is the kind of performance that an actor gets lost
into. There’s some controversy concerning this character because supposedly,
James Franco based his character on a real life rapper called Riff Raff? The
full story is that Korine offered this role to Riff Raff, who turned down the
role, so then it went to Franco. So the movie comes out and Riff Raff decides
to sue Korine for 10 million dollars because he feels the character is based on
him. Franco says no way, the character is based on another rapper called ‘Dangerous’.
Controversy aside, the performance is phenomenal, not to be missed.
Sometimes you watch a movie and suddenly you know you’re
watching one of the best movies of the year, and this is what happened to me
with Spring Breakers. After a while I was just being floored away by this
movie. The visuals are amazing, the party scenes were filmed with gusto, they don’t
feel staged, they have that realism that I’ve come to expect from a Korine
film, I’m sure they just filmed a real life party, you get the feeling things
are unfolding in front of the camera naturally. Then there are the colors of
the film which are intoxicating! Korine did things with fluorescent colors all throughout
the film; the colors on this movie are loud and beautiful to look at. Kudo’s to
Korine for trying something different, sometimes his films are so gritty and
real, so harsh, but this one feels like some feverish drug addled dream; a
different color from every pill taken in the film. The first few scenes filmed
in St. Petersburg Florida look amazing, they make you want to pack up your bags
on go on “Spring Break Forever”. Korine also did this great thing where he plays
with images and dialog, to the point where they collide, juggling the two and
making this interesting mix of dialog taking over the images and vice versa,
loved that. Spring Breakers is a Korine film masqueraded as a commercial film,
it’s the film that Oliver Stone’s Savages (2012) should have been, it has that
edge that Savages was desperately in need of. Everyone talks about this one as “the
movie with the four girls in bikini from beginning to end” and you might make
the same mistake I did, mistaking it for a stupid movie, well, let me tell ya,
it isn’t. This movie might just knock your socks off and become one of your
favorite movies of the year.
Rating: 5 out of 5
