“SPRING BREAKERS”

 

Directed by Harmony Korine

With James Franco, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens,

and Rachel Korine

 

If you think “Spring Breakers” is an empty headed “Beach Blanket Bingo,” you couldn’t be more mistaken.  This film is about audacious as any you have ever seen.  It is a brilliant social commentary about what happens when teens and college kids have too much. 

They are bored with everything, always needing more—including booze, drugs, sex. The counter culture director Harmony Korine shows what happens when having a good time becomes very dangerous.

“Spring Breakers” begins with a sunlit hazy feeling. Four very pretty coeds, Faith (Slenena Gomez), Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) have been best friends since grade school. They are making plans to get away from their boring college campus and go to St Petersburg Florida for “Spring Break.”

The girls realize they don’t have enough money to make the trip. They come up with a plan to rob a local diner. They will “pretend it is a video game.” They don black hoods, and screaming, use water pistols and sledge hammers to terrorize the diner’s patrons and grab the money from the register. It was so easy.

Next they arrive in St Petersburg along with thousands of other spring breakers. For the remainder of the movie, all girls are bikini clad, although occasionally some wear no bikinis. Gallons and gallons of booze are drunk, many times through hoses. The drugs and the sex escalate. The music is deafening. The four girls get into trouble and are put in jail (wearing those bikinis). They have no money for bail and think their fun is over.  

But they are observed by Alien (James Franco), a local rapper/drug dealer who bails them out. He is a scary enough looking guy, with dreadlocks, tattoos and silver teeth. He charms them, and asks them to stay with him. Alien offers them the excitement they seek, which includes more drugs, booze, and much more dangerous stuff.

“Spring Breakers” is a hypnotic, sensory experience. Harmony Korman has filmed it in short sequences interspersed with brief flashbacks. It feels like a dream, or perhaps a pastel-colored nightmare. At times music is relentless. You can’t take your eyes of the perfect bodies, the excesses, the mayhem. The tone becomes increasingly ominous as the film progresses.

Mr. Korman’s film both celebrates and mocks the “Spring Break” experience. It is a vivid caricature of a youth culture in which it is cool to be audacious and arrogant, not caring about consequences. The girls throw caution to the wind with chilling results. “Spring Breakers” is a crazy quilt of unabridged hedonism, all in Day Glo colors. Social commentary can be very disturbing, but in this film it is also dazzling.