Spring Breakers

Director: Harmony Korine.
Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine, and Gucci Mane.
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 93 mins. Reviewed in May 2013

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Rating notes: High impact themes, sex, and drug use

This is an American film that follows the adventures of four college-aged girls on a spring break. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, 2012.

Friends from the past, Faith (Selena Gomez), Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), and Cotty (Rachel Korine) have known each other since childhood, and are now college students together. They are out of control, and desperately want relief from the boring time they are experiencing at college. They decide to travel to Florida for “a spring break”. They don’t have a lot of money, and in order to get the finances for their trip, Brit and Candy rob a fast-food restaurant, and use Cotty as their getaway driver. Their actions shock Faith, who is “the innocent” of the group, and who, we are told, is a Christian (“jack(ed) up with Jesus” as a male preacher says). The ploy provides us with a spurious contrast between a good person (Faith) out for a good time, and bad girls (Brit, Candy, and Cotty) prepared to behave in depraved ways.

Down south, the girls take drugs, participate in wild beach parties, drink heavily, and are arrested by the Police for bad behaviour. They are rescued by a local drug-dealer, Alien (James Franco), who is a hustler, rapper and gangster, and he bails them out. Faith doesn’t like Alien’s life style and leaves, but the other three become part of Alien’s crime ring. Alien introduces them to easy sex, hard drugs, violence, and fast cars. The girls have sex with anyone around them, including themselves, and Alien picks a fight with Big Arch (Gucci Mane), who wants Alien out of his drug territory. In the ensuing conflict, Big Arch shoots at Alien in a drive-past and wounds Cotty in the attempt. In retaliation, Brit and Candy go on a rampage with Alien, who is killed in the assault. The girls murder Big Arch, and the final scenes of the movie show Brit and Candy kissing Alien’s dead body, and driving off in Big Arch’s Lamborghini.

Those looking to praise the movie might describe it as a biting social commentary on wayward youth where adolescent conflicts are explored with candour in an edgy piece of cult-cinema, directed with force and pulsating vitality. Those who stand on another side might describe the film as a blaze of hedonistic fulfilment, debasingly pornographic, and dangerously supportive of morally indefensible behaviour. There is a case to be made on both sides, but this reviewer lines up with the second view.

The imbibing of alcohol and drugs in this movie is extreme, as is the film’s profanity and sexual display, and a strong dose of violence with guns joins sex with aggression, which is an explosive combination. The four girls spend almost the entire length of the movie in their bikinis, and there are copious shots of the bikinis falling off their bodies at the slightest turn of the camera, or enticement from men. There looks to be some attempt to model the film on Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” (1994), but the movie does not have its social punch or narrative strength. Well before its end, the film turns into a sex-crazed orgy of violence and promiscuous sex.

Perhaps the most disturbing comment on this movie is that it promulgates sex as something one has with any girl who looks “to be asking for it”, and it reinforces the rape culture lying behind the myth that sex is maximally pleasurable for a woman who is stoned (or frightened) enough to really let herself go. It is a film made for those who prefer to see women as sexualised objects that exist only for someone else’s pleasure. And the copious images of lesbian sexuality are standard fare in pornographic literature for encouraging male turn-on.

This is a teenage exploitation film. It is technically accomplished, uses images which are arresting, and photographs its scenes cleverly. The film, however, is made for lurid appeal, targets women, and there is a startling gap between its intended audience, and the fact that the movie is R18+, which signifies adult-viewing only.

This is a movie that is as hard-edged an R as one is likely to see in a public cinema. It is a highly immoral movie, and grounded in self-gratification.