MPAA Rating: R
Director: Harmony Korine
How do you follow-up a film like Trash Humpers? How about enlisting James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Gucci Mane to create a bizarrely beautiful art-piece – part experimental film, part music video nestled inside a surreal narrative. Spring Breakers is definitely Korine’s most accessible film to date, but do not be fooled, their are plenty of the director’s trademark creative stylings throughout. Numerous scenes of both aberrant and common-place debauchery, use of VHS footage and grotesquely morphing film stills, all of these scenes and shots are perfectly enhanced by the well-suited score provided by Skrillex and Cliff Martinez.
Spring Breakers starts off perfectly showing the ridiculousness of spring-break in the form of a music video or imagine if Korine was in charge of filming MTV’s coverage of spring-break. The footage and music used normally to celebrate and aggrandize the allure of spring-break instead come off as preposterous, contemptible and sad. This opening scene signifying the theme of temptation later cemented through Faith’s introduction(innocently and impressively played by Selena Gomez) amid a ‘cool-talk’ church service and prayer circle. The allure of liberation through drinking, sex and partying is what captivates these young girls and when they realize they don’t have enough money to finance the trip, Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), and Cotty (Rachel Korine) devise a plan to rob a restaurant to acquire the necessary funds.
The four girls get to spring-break and join in on the festivities and partake in the drugs and drinking. Loving every minute of it, they wish they could stay there forever, even Faith, the church-going good girl. Faith’s enjoyment of spring-break is presented in a surreal sense of seriousness via voice-over while images of the debauchery play out on screen. She’s enjoying herself so much she wishes, oddly enough, that she could come back next year with her Grandma, thinking that the both of them would have a great time. Things are going swimmingly, that is, until the four of them are arrested.
Luckily, a local drug and arms dealer likes what he sees and decides to pay their fines, freeing them from a prison stay. James Franco undoubtedly gives his finest performance portraying this local hustler named Alien, cornrows, grill and all. Alien is the embodiment of temptation offering unlimited material possessions, money and good times. All to be had through the glorified culture of hustling and Alien’s perversion of materialism. Just take a look at all of his shit – shorts in every color, a wall of hats, machine guns, all kinds of colognes to smell good, nun-chucks and dark tanning oils. Alien is obsessed with all his shit and tells you this constantly. Just look at all of his shit!
From there, the inclusion of the girls into Alien’s operations, the film follows them as they rob other spring-breakers and get themselves into a turf war with Alien’s ex-best-friend, Archer (Gucci Mane). The surrealism does not stop there though, in fact Korine ramps it up. Bizarre scenes involving Alien fellating silencer-equipped guns, fully cocked and loaded and an amazing piano ballad rendition of Britney Spears, while the girls dressed in hot pink ski masks with unicorn insignia pirouetting with shotguns (a beautifully outlandish ode to artist Marcel Dzama). All of these scenes, plus everything else in the film is filmed masterfully by Benoît Debie. Every scene is meticulously crafted with a rich color palette of neon. A perfect blend of slow-motion, quick pans, indie-style still shots and disorienting camerawork matched to the disorienting score creating a perfectly constructed culmination of Korine’s artistic stylings.
Spring Breakers happens to be, arguably, the best work Harmony Korine has produced thus far. A masterfully crafted film; the culmination of Korine’s talents and aesthetics, further solidifying Korine as a singular creative force. Eschewing conventional production and storytelling, effectively creating a masterpiece. Given the context of Spring Breakers (the subject matter, its execution and, subsequent marketing and release), the film, perhaps, might just be Korine’s most absurdly bizarre film to date.
Spring break forever.
