Movie Review: Spring Breakers

Harmony Korine broke onto the scene in 1995 when he wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark’s Kids, a film that unflinchingly depicted a group of adolescents (many of them very young) engaging in sexual acts, taking drugs, and speaking in ways that likely horrified many adult audiences. 

That Kids was uncomfortably realistic was the reason it was loved by some and hated by many. Almost two decades later, Korine revisits many of Kids’ themes in Spring Breakers, his neon-soaked tale of four college girls’ trip to St. Petersburg, Florida for spring break. 

The eighteen-ish years in between defy classification, from Korine’s 1997 directorial debut Gummo, to his adoption of the “dogma 95” techniques for 1999’s Julien Donkey-Boy, to 2009’s Trash Humpers, which is rumored to have been designed to test audiences ability to refrain from walking out of the theater. Korine is first and foremost a provocateur—a filmmaker whose primary concern is to elicit a reaction, any reaction, from his audience. He’s not concerned with whether people love or hate his films, just as long as they aren’t indifferent.  

Given Korine’s filmmaking history, it’s almost unfathomable that Spring Breakers, an art film (that arguably deserves an NC-17 rating) masquerading as far more mainstream than it actually is thanks in no insignificant part to its familiar faces, currently sits in over 1,300 theaters nationwide. It’s without question the largest release of Korine’s career, and by a very wide margin, I would venture to guess. Don’t expect to see Spring Breakers topping any box office charts (although it has ranked in the top ten for two straight weeks), but the fact that it exists for people to see in any sizeable capacity is, well, pretty terrific.

I saw Spring Breakers for the first time over a week ago. I didn’t review it at the time for a few reasons, but mainly because I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate my feelings. The film is about the experience of seeing it more so than it is about the story or a particular performance. In this way, maybe it’s like traveling to Florida for spring break. I can’t say for sure – I’ve never experienced anything remotely like what the film depicts. This, I think, is Korine’s biggest achievement. Spring Breakers is a film that is at once entirely a Harmony Korine film, yet unlike anything he’s created before.

It’s a film that you can feel, not in the way you might think when discussing a movie, but almost in a tangible sense. After seeing it a second time, I feel well enough equipped to discuss it, and I feel comfortable saying that Spring Breakers is borderline great.  

Again, the story is not really the draw, but, for what it’s worth, the narrative progresses as follows. Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) and Brit (Ashley Benson) are four college girls of seemingly different ages. Desperate to escape crushing monotony by traveling to St. Petersburg for spring break, the girls (minus Faith) rob a local restaurant with water pistols and a rubber mallet to fund their trip.

After a chance meeting with a local drug dealer/gangster/wannabe rapper named Alien (an insanely entertaining James Franco), the girls get caught up in a situation well beyond traditional spring break partying, including a turf war with a rival named Archie (played almost inaudibly by Gucci Mane).

I’ve read a lot about the strength of the social satire that Spring Breakers contains, but after seeing the film twice I have to say I question how deep the satirical commenting actually goes. As he did in Kids, Korine shows us the spring break activities without passing judgment on them. He doesn’t condemn what he shows, even if viewers might find some of the behavior abhorrent, and he certainly doesn’t condone the activities outright. It’s depiction over comment.

That’s not to say that there is no meaning behind the gloss, per se. Obviously, the reasons we’re given for why these girls are so anxious to escape their daily lives, as well as the lengths they are willing to go through to achieve just that, speak more broadly to a generation, but how deep does the “monotony” rationale actually go? It’s not a novel explanation, and is fairly superficial. But that’s not necessarily a knock – again, I think the straightforward depiction of a superficial generation was precisely the point.

Perhaps Korine’s most obvious satirical comment comes in the form of Franco’s Alien, whose stereotypical gangster is so over the top that it is completely comedic. A scene in which Alien gives the girls a tour of his house feels like something ripped directly from MTV Cribs, including a reference to “Scarface on repeat.” It would be easy to overlook just how good Franco is here because the character is so ridiculous.

But the real surprise from an acting standpoint comes via Selena Gomez, who handles the most complete and interesting character, as well as the film’s most emotionally bothersome scene with relative ease. Her character’s religious elements juxtaposed against her desire to let loose may be a bit on the nose, but her character is the only one who ever convincingly conveys internal conflict.

Hudgens’ Candy and Benson’s Brit are a little more problematic. Basically mirror images of one another (they often physically and verbally replicate each other), it’s a bit hard to accept some of the things they do, and surprisingly the initial robbery is low on that list. The first ten minutes of Spring Breakers throws a lot of information our way—it’s less character development than it is a checklist of character traits. These attempt to provide a foundation for later actions, but it doesn’t feel entirely satisfactory. The most crucial scene for Candy and Brit is, oddly enough, not the robbery itself, but their later gleeful recreation of it. It’s one of two scenes that is such a frightening reflection of them as people that it induced nervous laughter from both theaters I was in.

From a directorial standpoint, Spring Breakers is the most impressive thing Korine has likely ever done. It’s a chaotic film, but Korine is always in control. The single, continuous shot of the robbery scene through the window of the getaway car as it circles the restaurant may be Korine’s finest moment yet – it’s just an incredibly well directed sequence. The use of frequent repetition helps establish character boredom in the first half, and a surreal, dreamlike quality in the second half that ultimately results in a fairly ambiguous finale.

Korine composes entire sequences out of fragments of others, past, present, and future, that helps to create a disorienting atmosphere along what is actually a fairly linear narrative. The neon color palette and the Skrillex/Cliff Martinez combo score enhance the film’s overall feeling, but the most memorable sequence is the result of a far more unconventional song choice. It’s a scene that involves a piano, slow motion violence, and a Brittney Spears song that sounds too insane to be real.

Admittedly, Spring Breakers isn’t for everyone. It will offend some and disgust others. Some will walk out, and others will probably enjoy it as a party not unlike those depicted in the film. None of these reactions is wrong – the only wrong reaction would be to not have one at all.

9/11