10 years later, modern classic 'Spring Breakers' remains fascinating
A24
Note: This review was originally written in late 2013 for Magill’s Cinema Annual.
There are no consequences in dreams. Terrible things can happen. Events can fold into each other, fraying and repeating and delighting and horrifying. But the end is always a return to something safe and real and, in many cases, less exciting.
So goes the fantastic hypnosis of “Spring Breakers,” an experiential film that makes triumphant use of countless dualities without ever asserting moral high ground or universal judgment. Certain filmmakers might have depicted beer-covered breasts, corn-rowed rappers and strip club mayhem as a cautionary tale, the inevitable downfall of partying gone wrong. Not writer-director Harmony Korine. With his most mainstream work to date—which says more about the bizarre niche-ness of his previous films than his latest effort, which is not exactly fun for the whole family—Korine creates a thumping pastiche of life experience in which identities are fluid and everything is open to interpretation.
Highlighting the polar opposite notion of relatively innocent students descending, literally and figuratively, to the beaches of Florida for maximum debauchery, former Disney princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens star as college girls who are similar and different. Suiting her name, Faith (Gomez) attends religious meetings and maintains a modest demeanor. Candy (Hudgens) licks the penis she draws on her notebook during class and, after she and Brit (Ashley Benson) rob a restaurant in a breathtaking sequence shot from the getaway car outside, coos, “Seeing all this money makes my pussy wet.”
Yet both of these lifelong friends want to escape the academic routine and feel total freedom in an environment where constant intoxication and relentless pursuit of hedonism are the norm, not the exception. So Faith, Candy, Brit and Cotty (Korine’s wife Rachel) journey to St. Petersburg, Florida, where the liquor flows like water and the beaches tumble with the scantily clad, sun-drenched vigor of youthful independence run wild. Korine does not present this as the linear transition from ordinary, mundane and socially accepted scholastic pursuits to the sinful, uninhibited (and underage) indulgence of everything most parents do not want to believe their kids even know about, much less choose to do. Instead, the impressionistic “Spring Breakers,” with a huge assist from the ace score by wub-wub master Skrillex and composer Cliff Martinez (“Drive”), turns vacation into a breathing organism and a level-headed examination of deliberately thoughtless behavior. Think of it like a movie or a video game, the girls say before the robbery that nets the money they need for their trip. This could be taken as a commentary on how media impacts viewers, though Korine uses it more as one of many ways young people step outside the versions of themselves society has cultivated in order to become (or is it return to?) the person they actually want to be.
After a lot of partying and a few days in jail, much of the characters’ spring break centers on Alien (James Franco), a self-described rapper/hustler who bails out the girls because, hey, everyone needs bailing out sometimes. He is the ultimate mix of twisted charm—”They kicked me out of school,” he says, “I thought that was great”—and underlying menace. In Franco’s extraordinary performance, Alien both lives up to his motto of coming from another planet while embodying everything wonderful and terrible about the communities that thrive on spring breakers. To Alien, whose real name is Al, the vacationers are the scum, temporarily infiltrating his home for a taste of his everyday life before running away to their definition of normal. He, of course, flourishes in the attention of the kids who drunkenly sing along when he is on stage. Hearing those strangers’ voices is humbling, he says, while his face suggests that this humbling moment only elevates his pride and ego.
Since writing 1995’s “Kids” and his directorial debut “Gummo,” Korine has built his career on sub-cultural observation. Yet as a filmmaker, his increasing fixation on the exaggerated situations of traditionally non-Hollywood characters has made him more of an underground hero than a storyteller with the crossover appeal of, say, Gus Van Sant. With “Spring Breakers,” Korine has almost done Van Sant’s version of an MTV special, considering the unusual, communal beauty of the party and the little-discussed desirability of the crash. Sure, when the quartet of young women is arrested, Faith notes that this was not supposed to happen; it is not what they came for. In some ways, though, it seems that the people in “Spring Breakers,” to varying degrees, tiptoe toward the line at which they would become uncomfortable or make a mistake. A story is not much of a story without something extreme happening, and no one goes to a densely populated, boozy spring break destination for a major dose of the average.
Meanwhile, the setting becomes a character, morphing based on who is around and the degree to which potential disaster hangs in the air. This world subsists on the economic boon brought by the spring breakers, yet it also constantly seems on the verge of consuming them along with their cash, blending the sea of college partiers into a seedier element represented not so much by the grills that adorn Alien and his twin pals’ teeth but by the look that comes across their faces after sitting down with their new female friends in bikinis. They look almost like wolves preparing to feast, and Korine generates plenty of non-exploitative tension out of the question of how far this situation will go, and who is actually holding the power. His actresses all carry the load, differentiating their characters enough to matter but not enough that any outsize, disparate personalities contradict the notion that at spring break, the search for self blends into a mass of people simultaneously searching for anonymity. For perhaps the first time, Gomez, who has yet to prove with her voice or her stage presence that she deserves to be a pop star, demonstrates that she can hold her own as an actress and contribute to headier projects than fluff like “Monte Carlo.”
Wild parties happen at school, too, Korine is careful to demonstrate. However, it is only in the supposed safety of spring break that these freewheeling folks claim they can discover who they truly are, even as they are shedding most of what defines them on a day-to-day basis. The imagined becomes the actual; fake guns become real guns and bullets fly. What is anyone really capable of, and what actions have lasting impacts? The film communicates truth through fiction and a nightmare through a dream without ever mocking anyone’s path. A different and far less successful example of addressing youth gone wild arrived later in 2013 in Sofia Coppola’s disappointing “The Bling Ring,” which also showed teenagers doing irresponsible things but presented its events through a lens of disgust. How foolish and shallow these people are, Coppola seemed to say.
On the contrary, Korine sees a generation raised on music videos and pop stars and does not necessarily claim that their perspectives are right or wrong. He merely sees life as endless role-playing and dares to accept multifaceted human nature that is rarely permitted after graduation, usually to the chagrin of the graduates. That does not mean that the St. Petersburgs or the Cancuns of the world ever die out; a new crop is always on the horizon. Spring break is forever, but spring breakers all have to go home sometime. There is only so long someone can leave themselves until the getaway becomes the norm, necessitating an escape from the escape. And everyone has their own definition of which existence is their chosen reality.
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