When a film opens with the piercing noise of a Skrillex song, you know it’s either going to be an abomination, akin to the banal Project X, or it’s going to be a kind of beautiful sensory overload that you have never experienced in cinemas before. Thankfully, “Spring Breakers” is the latter, and director Harmony Korine is in on the joke. This is not a serious film by any stretch of the imagination. Towards the beginning we are told to “imagine like it’s a video game or a movie,” and it plays out like a movie; the spring break presented in the film is definitely not rooted in reality.
“Spring Breakers” stars Disney alumnae Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, along with Ashley Benson from “Pretty Little Liars” and the director’s wife Rachel Korine. The four play a group of college girls stuck on campus for spring break because they do not have enough money to travel to Florida. The solution? Rob the local fried chicken restaurant. The film is not about the loss of innocence as they commit the robbery towards the beginning of the film; it is about finding something to replace the innocence with. From this moment on the girls immerse themselves in the debauchery that spring break presents them. The amount of Natural Light present in this film is reminiscent of a party on Fraternity Row; you can almost smell the watered-down beer. Drink, drugs, sex … at some points a Lindsay Lohan cameo would not feel abnormal. Eventually the girls end up in jail, until they are bailed out by an unrecognizable James Franco.
Franco plays Alien, a part-time rapper and full-time drug dealer, complete with dreadlocks and gold teeth. Alien introduces the girls to his mansion, the contents of which include a copious number of guns, stacks of Benjamins and more bags of marijuana than in the evidence room of our local police force. It is safe to say that this is the best performance of James Franco’s largely unimpressive career, and you genuinely believe him as a demented drug dealer who has Scarface playing on repeat on his TV and a white grand piano next to his swimming pool. The piano is used to perfection in the highlight of the film, which sees Alien sing Britney Spears’s ballad “Everytime,” cross-cut with images of him and the girls wielding guns and robbing drug dealers.
The marketing of the film has definitely avoided the fact that “Spring Breakers” has clear art house roots. And Harmony Korine’s ploy seems to have worked, capitalizing on marketing this towards the mainstream as Bieberholics have flocked to the cinema, unintentionally becoming the butt of Korine’s joke. “Spring Breakers” does not possess a strong narrative, which could put off people who do not know what to expect from a Harmony Korine film, as most of the film just shows the girls slowly falling deeper and deeper into the seediness of spring break. But it is the film’s second half in which it truly comes to life as the girls become involved in a drug war between Alien and a rival dealer played by Gucci Mane.
The casting of Gucci Mane as a drug kingpin sums up “Spring Breakers” perfectly. We have rapper Gucci Mane, who has an ice cream cone tattooed on his face, playing an evil drug lord. It is an inspired casting choice and perfectly fitting for the film. Gucci Mane is not an actor, and the way he slurs his lines makes you completely aware that this film is pure fantasy. But in a film featuring montages over Britney Spears songs, former Disney starlets shooting guns and James Franco with a gold grill over his teeth, Gucci Mane hardly feels out of place.
Korine’s escapist spring break fantasy may not be for everyone, but his film feels alive, both celebrating and criticizing the current “YOLO” culture of America. With the stunning visuals provided by art house favorite Benoît Debie and the deafening Skrillex soundtrack, it is hard not to take something away from “Spring Breakers.”
Leading in today’s Crimson White:
Fourth annual DCAF to host 12 musical acts Saturday
