Spring Breakers (2012) or, It's Florida, Bitcheeeez!

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Miami Movie of the Year

 

The colorful, in-your-face youthfully brash poster for Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers

 

Four young college girls must get away for their spring break; away from their depressing dorms to sunny Florida, even if their vacation is only made possible through a violent robbery. During their time there, they wallow in drink and drugs and send reassuring messages home to their families.

Spring Breakers, by writer-director Harmony Korine (Gummo (1997)), is a visually persuasive and impressive argument. - But for, or against, what? It seems too sophisticatedly made to be just a trite scare story about the dangers of guns, crime, drugs, uncontrolled partying and Miami spring breaks. One can easily project a lot of oneself into an analysis of the film, which doesn't stand out as strongly as related predecessors like Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Irréversible (2002).

The visually sensory-based, light-stressing universe is reminiscent of a Nicki Minaj music video (with cinematography by Benoît Debie (Get the Gringo (2012))) and, - together with the almost constant, wavy music (score by Cliff Martinez (Drive (2011)) and Skrillex (Smog City (2012, documentary))), - weigh up for the fact that the story moves slowly and at times feels secondary to the stunning visuals. It is incredible that Korine has managed to get the four promising young actresses to join him in this wild movie. SPOILER Their characters are mostly deeply unlikable, but so are the people that they kill, so any major reaction to these misdeeds remains absent. James Franco (Howl (2010)) is great and gives perhaps his career's most transformative performance as the silly-idiotic drug dealer Alien.

 

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Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 5 mil. $

Box office: 31.7 mil. $

= Huge hit

[Spring Breakers premiered September 4 (Venice International Film Festival) and runs 94 minutes. Korine has said he wanted to make the film to make up for his own missed spring breaks, which he used on skateboarding instead of pursuing hedonism. Emma Roberts was in talks to star in the film. Filming took place in Florida in and around March 2012. The film opened #27 in just 3 theaters to a huge 263k $ first weekend, peaking at #6 in 1,104 theaters in the US, where it grossed 14.1 mil. $ (44.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 4.6 mil. $ (14.5 %) and Canada with 1.7 mil. $ (5.4 %). Rapper Riff Raff has announced that he would sue the producers for "sampling" his life in Franco's character, but the suit doesn't seem to have materialized, perhaps unsurprisingly. Many critics included the film on their top 10 of the year lists, and Franco campaigned unsuccessfully for Oscar attention for his performance. Spring Breakers is fresh at 67 % with a 6.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Spring Breakers?