“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” says Faith in whispery voiceover. When the girls are arrested during a bust at a druggy party, they are hauled in their bikini tops and cutoffs before a judge who orders them to pay a fine or spend another night in the lockup. But there’s a nagging sense that a sliver of substance has been pumped full of growth hormones in post.
And the electronic score by Cliff Martinez and dubstep musician Skrillex that saturates every scene (along with a sprinkling of chart hits) is no less propulsive than Martinez’s music was in Drive or Contagion. Cinematographer Benoit Debie’s visuals, with their sun-blasted exteriors, pink skies, neon splashes and candy color washes, have a cool allure. Korine and editor Douglas Crise use repetition in the images and dialogue to obsessive effect. Here and throughout, voiceover is featured heavily, much of it vapid stuff about wanting all this to last forever. Faith seems unsettled when her pals re-enact the robbery for her, but she nonetheless partakes of the proceeds as the four girls cruise around town on rented scooters. The adrenaline rush they get from this taste of violent crime hints at what’s to come.Įven before they hit Florida, the action time-shuffles Girls Gone Wild/MTV-style montages of hard-partying college kids in various stages of inebriation and undress. Cotty has pink highlights and a sullen streak, while interchangeable Candy and Brit are defined only by their blondness.ĭesperate to get out of their dull college town but short on cash, the bad girls wield fake guns and hammers to hold up a Chicken Shack, terrorizing the customers and later torching the stolen car they used. Gomez plays the pointedly named Faith, a Christian youth group member who has somehow remained close to three reprobate skanks she has known since kindergarten, Candy (Hudgens), Brit ( Ashley Benson) and Cotty ( Rachel Korine, the writer-director’s wife). “Poetry in motion” is how Franco’s drug-dealing rapper Alien describes the crowd at a beach beer blast. More than by Franco, the film’s profile will be boosted by the presence of former Disney Channel cuties Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens among all the bong-hitting, boozing, coke-snorting, breast-baring, grinding bodies. But it’s also too monotonous and thematically empty to be seriously provocative.Ĭast: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane It has hypnotic visual style and a dense, driving soundscape. It may be one of Korine’s more conventional narratives, but this is basically a porn-pulp snort of derision at the American Dream and the youthful search for self, packaged as Beach Blanket Bingo on acid. Sounds good? Well, like the film as a whole, Franco’s borderline parodistic performance is interesting only up to a point. At one point he sits poolside at a cheesy white grand piano and sings a Britney Spears ballad while three co-eds in DTF pants and pink ski masks do an impromptu dance routine with AK-47s.
Playing a trashy Florida gangsta with beaded cornrows and a gleaming mouthful of metal, he’s a cross between Bo Derek in 10 and Richard Kiel in Moonraker. Even by the elastic measure of James Franco’s unpredictable career, the actor gives one of his more bizarre performances in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers.
0 kommentar(er)
