I'm sure it happened to you at least once in school. A kid with one of these strange, ''creative'' names walked in class and you made fun of him/her. Driver Phillips or maybe Sparrow Johnson, something like that. But that kid wore his/her name with gusto and was more awesome than you, because he/she had artistic parents that game him/her a concrete self-esteem, so the name-calling stopped and everybody befriended him/her. For a handful of you, that person might have been Harmony Korine, now successful author and director, and we should thank heavens for his strange parents because they were most likely instrumental in creating the graceful, arresting and deceptively beautiful SPRING BREAKERS.
The movie opens on a long, otherworldly slow-motion sequence shot of teenagers partying on a beach to dubstep music. The shot is amazing, because it's not sexualized at all. it's filmed like something straight out of National Geographic. If titties swing by the frame, the camera keeps moving regardless as it is interested by the animalistic nature of partying rather than teenage sexuality. It's a rare kind of shot that reminds us how blessed we are to have a singular nature like Harmony Korine shooting movies.
Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine), the four young protagonists of SPRING BREAKERS, all have a very common teenage problem: they are rebelling against routine *. They're doing crazy things just for the sake of brutally murdering monotony. Things like robbing a fast food joint to finance a trip to spring break. All the girls want is to party, meet new people and experience things, but they are confronted with a reality of adult life when they are arrested and subsequently bailed out by local gangster Alien (James Franco) who has plans for them.
Jeff Jarrett makes a random cameo in this movie. How awesome is that?
How bold is that? A director takes two Disney princesses, two young girls a major corporation invested big dollars in and starred them in the depraved fairy tale of broken innocence that is SPRING BREAKERS. Much noise was made about Miley Cyrus' emancipation/rebranding, but what about the quietly strong performance Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens are giving in Harmony Korine's latest masterpiece? I've always raved about Hudgens' unexploited potential, but she is doing great here as the teenage bad girl experiencing the bad life for the first time: guns, money, clubs, she seems to have a hunger for it all. Candy, Cotty and Brit all want to be BAD.
The first part of SPRING BREAKERS is about Faith's need to emancipate, but as soon as she does and that the going gets darker, she goes home and Alien becomes the protagonist of the movie. His grudge with his ex-friend Archie (Gucci Mane) becomes a point of focus. Much has been said about James Franco's powerful performence as Alien and I can only vouch for it again. He is by far the best actor in a movie where nobody gives a bad performance.
I thought SPRING BREAKERS would be good, entertaining, but it turned out to have several pleasant surprises for me. Harmony Korine's screenplay is rock solid and his direction carries the exact emotional weight he intended his words to have. It's a colourful ride at the very heart of darkness. SPRING BREAKERS explores the challenge of social boundaries rebellious kids all have to face at one point of another and it does so while telling a heartbreaking fairy tale about an unlikely protagonist. Harmony Korine, thank you for existing and for making movies!
* There is a beautiful scene where Selena Gomez's character enumerates the things she's bored of seeing everyday. Writing is another of Harmony Korine's many talents and one of SPRING BREAKERS' many calling cards.