Harmony Korine's lean 94 minute run time takes us on the journey of Faith, Candy, Brit and Cotty; four college girls desperate to make it to Spring Break, though for varying reasons. For Faith, the good-natured, religious one of the group, it represents a chance for self-discovery; the opportunity to get in touch with herself and her friends in a way that boring, old, homegrown life just doesn't afford. For the other three, not so much. They know exactly who they are: they booze, they toke, they sleaze, they attack. They just want more of it. Now. So they (minus Faith) rob a local restaurant for the funds to buy themselves a good time and head on down the rabbit hole.
On the outset, it might seem like this movie wears all that it is proudly on its sleeve. I think that might be part of the big prank this movie is pulling. Selena Gomez's Faith is probably the best example of this. We first come upon her at some sort of new-age religious gathering, where the guy with the bleached-blonde hair and Ed Hardy T-shirt is talking about how "jacked up" on Christ he is and how "totally cool" a piece of scripture is. She's noticeably a little embarrassed by the whole "get down with the kids" approach, but it's clear this stuff is still important to her. She's the closest thing the audience has to a sympathetic, central protagonist, especially when mirrored against Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine), who her church friends describe as volatile, violent, unpredictable ne'er-do-wells . We see Faith the most, we empathise with Faith the most and we expect Faith to be the one to save their tortured souls from death and destruction when things inevitably go bad. How funny then that when things do inevitably go bad, their would-be savior takes a quick look around and says, "...I'm fuckin' outta here."
The film laughs at our expectations at every single turn. It opens with a slow-motion montage set on a beautiful beach, with beautiful people, to the tune of Skrillex's Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. When the drop comes, it's nothing but booze, tits, ass and smiles. This is what we expect from a movie called Spring Breakers, and the movie knows this. The montage ends suddenly mid-song, and less than ten minutes later, we're watching three girls with ski masks and water pistols violently rob a chicken shop in a hugely impressive, single take. From that point on, it's anyone's guess where this is all going.
It even seems like the movie itself isn't sure of where it's heading. I started this review saying that watching it made me feel drunk. From a technical perspective, what I mean is that the film toys with its chronological order freely, occasionally flashing a shot from a scene that won't fully play out until much later smack bang in the middle of another. It happily jumps between different lenses; one given event could be shown from a standard camera, someone's phone, or even at one point what looks like a series of moving negatives that warp and accentuate wherever it chooses. It regularly plays montages that jump back and forth in time, tone and theme, while one character monologues something that may or may not reflect its visual counterpart. There's even a scene in which the dialogue of a small exchange between three characters is looped four or five times, while we watch them have sex and prepare to do something incredibly violent. At the same time. It's like waking up the next morning trying to remember what happened the night before. Our minds jump all over the place, trying to cement worthy images into our memory banks, or replaying a particular conversation endlessly in order to extract as much definition out of it as possible. It's both technically brilliant and completely nauseating.
This movie continually took me by surprise, none so much as James Franco's incredible performance as the hustler/rapper, Alien. Showing up about a third of the way through the movie to bail the four girls out of jail, he attempts to integrate them into his way of life. In Candy, Brit and Cotty, he recognises their recklessness and seeks to exploit it. In Faith, he sees a challenge. He fails, as she high tails it immediately, but he makes sure she doesn't leave without a little mental scarring ("When I'm with them, I'll be thinking about you."). But maybe this was his plan all along. Getting rid of her leaves him free to drag the other three girls willingly into decadence; they're powerless to his seduction. Or are they? In one scene, Alien bounces around his bedroom, proudly displaying the American Dream he's living out to Candy and Brit ("Look at my shit! I got shorts! Every fuckin' colour. I got designer T-shirts! I got gold bullets. Motherfuckin' vampires. I got Scarface. On repeat. Scarface on repeat!"). He's got them proudly wrapped around his finger, until Candy and Brit are both holding him up against the wall, forcing him to fellate two of his own guns. It seems their gleeful willingness to commit a robbery earlier in the film was only the tip of the iceberg. But it's not over yet. Alien happily goes down on his own arsenal. He works a little rhythm into it. He takes both at once. He grabs Brit's ass and deep throats the barrel. They're taken by surprise, and they love it. Alien takes the guns out of his mouth and brings the two girls in close. "I think I just found my soul mates," he whispers as he moves in to kiss them. It's fucked up, but I dare you to look away.
The bizarre scenes don't end there. Later, Alien sits at a white piano situated beside his pool overlooking the ocean. Candy, Brit and Cotty head out to meet him, dressed in bikinis and pink balaclavas with unicorns printed on the forehead. Candy has a shotgun, the other two have automatic pistols. "Play something inspiring, something uplifting," they demand. Alien happily obliges, and unleashes a haunting rendition of Britney Spears' Everytime. Yeah, I said haunting. While Britney's voice is slowly integrated into the audio mix, we're treated to a slow-motion montage of a brutally violent robbery. A man vomits blood while we listen to 90s pop star sing a love song. It's like The Hangover with its serious face on.
Here's the thing, though: I have no idea what this movie is saying. I mentioned earlier it felt kind of like the movie exists as a massive prank on our expectations. Look at its cast: The Disney Channel alumni scantily clad in a movie called Spring Breakers, that boasts "strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use and violence throughout", and a soundtrack by Skrillex. Its marketing campaign enforces this with a vengeance. By all accounts, it's targeting a very specific audience. But for the life of me, I can't tell if the film itself is making fun of, condemning or celebrating these people. It's not a fun-filled, lighthearted sex comedy by any stretch, but it's got an upbeat pumping soundtrack and plenty of beautiful, naked bodies. It's disjointed, messy and unrelenting, but it never leaves its audience in the dark. People die, and one way or another, everybody wears the consequences of their actions, but the characters leave the film the same way they came in, learning nothing of their dark experiences. Perhaps the film is just saying that these people, and this lifestyle, exists. Perhaps it's up to us to decide whether or not that's okay. Personally, I'm too hung over to care.
