I finally saw Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers last night. I didn’t believe a frame of it but then I’m not supposed to, right? It’s such a thoroughly cliched erotic fantasia about crazy-ass hot-bod chicks (three Tarantino-dream-fantasy sluts and one half-sensible lapsed Christian) and gun-fellating and orgiastic Fellini Satyricon boning and snorting around and Florida gangstas flashing their guns and braggin’ ’bout their “sheeyit”…I mean, like, uhhm…why? Oh, I get it. Don’t ask.
I was imagining a Godzilla-sized Charlton Heston dressed as Moses, rising hundreds of feet out of the ocean and blotting out the sun and pointing at these skanky, well-toned scumbags and bellowing “whoa unto thee…!!!” Or maybe Jim Hutton as Moses.
I wasn’t bored but I was wondering if Korine had anything in mind other than trying to create fantasies about where college-age kids are at these days in order to…I don’t know, imply something about how slippery and nihilistic it’s all become out there and or to vaguely get himself off in the vein of Larry Clark?
He clearly hasn’t the slightest interest in trying to assemble a film that might reflect how it would really be if four sociopathic lassies in their late teens or early 20s were to somehow scrape some dough together and drive down to Florida, etc. Most women I know like to pick and choose and not just drop to their knees in front of their first ape they see. As best I can tell Korine is having himself a whimsical wank, and we’re meant to get off as best we can or at least laugh along the way or whatever.
James Franco is clearly laughing at the asshole he’s playing (his character is named Anus or Asswipe or something like that), especially during that scene in which he sings a Britney Spears song. Scarface playin’ on his flatscreen in a continual loop…”mah sheeyit!” I was kidding about the name — he’s called “Alien.”
If there’s some kind of subliminal, half-sincere social commentary woven into this thing it’s suspended between “look at these impossibly stupid empty chicks and the things that really matter to them” and “look at the bods on these girls and how they’re into standing on their heads in motel hallways and how they’re all ready to swallow salami at the drop of a hat.” Or something like that.
Spring breakin’ as a lifestyle, a constancy, a never-ending place in your head, a philosophy…somewhere between a duel and a place in the sun.
At least it has one great sequence — two masked girls going into a diner and screeching and waving a gun around and taking everyone’s money, but shot from the POV of the getaway driver as the camera watches the action through windows and with the sound muted as the car slowly drives around.
Remember when 15 or 20 Columbians attacked Tony Montana‘s Miami fortress with automatics and shotguns? It was quite a battle but eventually the Montana forces lost. These days you don’t need 15 or 20 Columbians to wipe out a drug gang. All you need are two college girls with two big-ass pistols and super-size magazines just blastin’ away, expending hundreds of rounds and never catching a bullet themselves.
