Don’t let the advertising fool you, Spring Breakers is not the Female Project X that those who have never heard of Harmony Korine anticipated. I mean, what did you really expect from the guy who directed Trash Humpers? Although the film doesn’t have a real plot or narrative, Spring Breakers hypnotises you immediately in the opening credits with its Skrillex soundtrack and images of the beautiful and the young getting crunk in the sun. The films hooks you in so much that when I left the cinema, my friend said she felt like she was on something afterwards.
After robbing a diner to pay for their Spring break trip to Florida (sound tracked by Nicki Minaj’s Moment 4 Life – nice touch), our four college girls party hard and eventually get arrested only to be bailed out by James Franco’s mesmerising Alien. This is where the film really get interesting. Korine introduces the girls to a life of crime, pink balaclavas, sex, firearms and Britney Spears covers to last a lifetime – or not, depending on what you take away from the film. This may be my favourite James Franco role to date as he completely steals the film away from our four lead actresses. Not to say that their presence goes unseen. Vanessa Hudgens was a particular stand out – she has a case of the crazy eyes that really works with her wild character, Candy and the three others played by Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez and Rachel Korine all bring it. Perhaps my only problem with the film was the all too obvious character names. Like really, a good Christian girl named Faith? A surreal gangster who shows them a whole new world, named Alien? Come on.
Personally, I have no idea what to take away from it, but I loved it in spite of that. We get the feeling that the girls know exactly what they’re in for. Even in the spectacular finale sequence, their phone calls home aren’t ones of remorse or goodbye, they’re of celebration of their time spent in this surreal world. At one point, they even tell each other to think of it as a videogame. A particular stand out has to be the strangely compelling scene in which Alien sings a cover of Britney Spears’ Everytime to the girls whilst they dance around in the aforementioned pink balaclavas holding guns. That alone should be enough to make you go and see it.
Something that I found interesting was that as you learn about the characters, you realise that you know these girls, you might be friends with these girls, maybe you even are one of these girls and because of this, our generation watching are likely to understand their hedonistic choices more than the typical middle aged male film critic. Right now, I feel like I can safely say that Spring Breakers will be one of my favourite films of the year. Spring break is indeed forever, bitches.
Beth Johnston
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