Spring Breakers is an unusual creature, an unusual creature which is almost as unusual as the hybrid ensemble central “character” of the film. The four inseparable “spring breakers” are essentially the same being and act as one living, breathing character, the four constantly bikini-clad young women always in close proximity of one another, supporting one another, caring for one another. Even when, during the rare occasion that one of them becomes isolated or isn’t sharing the screen with the other three counterparts, you trust their loyalty and ritualised promise to always be there for one another and to see things through as a unit. There comes a point, however, when the inseparability of the four feels like poor characterisation. The four are more or less indistinguishable as they speak the same, dress the same and have the same interests. They do have their differences, but regardless, the more you watch, the less your care about criticising. Spring Breakers is aggressively hypnotic and knows assertively what it is and what its message is. For some films, you have to tell yourself to just go with it, but with Spring Breakers, you just can’t help but go along for the ride; it helps to be as carefree as its antiheroes are.
The film begins in an unusually new-wave Terence Malick style. The camera floats, wanders and ponders, flitting between close-ups of the expressive yet in equal measure vacant and non-expressive characters and wide shots of the dingey, middle-America suburbs that they pace around at night. Information about these characters is given to us in varying bursts of directness which keeps us on our toes. It frequents the path of giving you total coherent information whilst also giving you nothing at all, expressing an atmosphere or an action as opposed to whether those partaking are even important to the story. For a long while, you won’t have much of an idea as to what the story is about. The plot is occasionally forced forwards by one of the four spring breakers breaking the equilibrium and doing something unexpected, which says a lot about the nature of one of the many (or not many) themes of the film. Doing something unconventional, extraordinary, audacious out of sheer boredom and unfulfillment in privilege.
We learn that one of these young women, Faith, is a church-goer, but judging by her diminished enthusiasm compared to her fellow singing, dancing, and clapping worshippers, we get the idea that this isn’t the place for her. Paradoxically, she’s reassured by a session leader that everything is temporary and that you can switch tracks whenever you want, you’re in control of your decisions. Ironically, Faith takes this pro-Jesus advice and uses it to abandon Christ and her current lifestyle. We also meet the other three main characters, equally bored and dissatisfied college students who crave some kind of change. The essence introduced in Faith’s story of everything being “temporary” and being about to leave “whenever you want” remains an active pulse throughout the most part of the film, at least before things turn sour. It’s an immensely relevant ethos engrained in many of the minds of contemporary youths today. We have all these options and if you’re not happy, you can just change your life, as easy as that. Or so we think. Because, with this haphazard reassurance that you can, at the snap of a finger, commit to a different life, comes an inherent motivation to abuse that backup plan. So, in the neglectful knowledge that things can only and probably, hopefully, maybe will improve, the four girls turn to partying, drinking, wandering, sleeping around, and most importantly, talking about how their lives will be different, without actually doing anything about it at all. There’s no urgency. They’re unified by social boredom and mediocrity in an environment where they’ve outstayed their welcome, their desperation to let loose evident by the indiscrete note sharing to one another of “I love penis” in a packed college lecture, apparently the only remedy to this disease of boredom.
Image Credit: IndieWire
However cringe-inducing or unimportant or self-centred or shocking or boring you may find this consistent mantra of talking about change without doing anything positive about it, there is an undeniable sense of contagious curiosity. The dream-like way in which the message is presented to you works like an affirmation, and the lengthy sequences of nothing but wandering draws you in rather than puts you off. If the film were shot and directed more conventionally then sure, this opening duration would have felt drawn out and slow and dull. Instead, Spring Breakers is presented in an ethereal, neon-lit, timeless state, where the camera roams like a ghost. The cinematography and production design is addictive. It nails presenting the ordinary as just that, plain and simple ordinary, whilst giving it enough flavour through bright contrasting colours and buzzing, neon white lights to keep the locations alive through the night, which without the lights, would mean sleep, followed by morning, followed by college and more ritualised dullness. Once you grasp the style of the film, it becomes far less inaccessible and strange and instead somewhat relaxing and meditative. Bathe in this aesthetic for long enough and it’s hard not to reciprocate in the ever-inviting, fever-dream-like aura that the film boasts through neon-drenched visuals and a comfortably warm t-shirt weather nights, electric fluorescent humming of 24/7 corner shops and a neglected responsibility to take control of our lives and futures.
Soon, my fears of a lack of characterisation had disappeared, understanding that this isn’t necessarily a film about character but atmosphere and thematic landscapes. So, what is it actually about? Well, the montage-like style doesn’t let up, and Spring Breakers keeps it up until the end. To its credit, as soon as the girls reach Florida to partake in, you guessed it, spring break, the music video-like direction and visual style is extremely fitting against the backdrop of spring break at its peak. At points, it feels dissimilar to a music video, and, whether you like it or not, a pure 2012 throwback, which means a fashion sense that became outdated extraordinarily fast and plenty of Skrillex to go round for everyone. These scenes do little to build on anything other than atmosphere, but they’re quintessential to the film. They represent what the four young women are chasing, which seems like liberating, careless, harmless fun, but in equal measure, just as nullifying and pointless as you’d expect it to be.
The sole narrative strand of the film is explored in this “harmless” fun. If you’ve ever been the sober one on a night out, you’re the main, reliable eyewitness to the controversies that a night out rarely goes without; so-and-so doing this with so-and-so, which you know will only result in regret and turmoil for the following weeks from the start date of the following morning. Much of the film observes but never examines, which appropriately reflects on this drink-to-forget-and-regret nightlife culture (or in Spring Breakers, day-life culture too). All but Faith (Brit, Candy and Cotty) are unphased by this unlawful, irresponsible behaviour, and she soon decides to go home after she comes too close for comfort with a robbery and later getting arrested for a drug crime she wasn’t involved with. That is how the four raised the funds to get to Florida, by robbing, which the women are surprisingly skilful at, using fake guns and balaclavas and a crazed, committed attitude. They then ceremoniously burn their also stolen car and finally reach their local party capital. For some reason, despite all this, a tiny portion of innocence remains, just about.
By this point, you’re beyond really caring for them, but this doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the film. You know next to nothing about these women other than their sole ambition to go out and party. Therefore, you naturally find your curiosity taking over as to what will go wrong next. Inevitably, they begin to mix with the wrong crowd, but they go to the worst crowd. Korine does a wonderful job in creating an adult version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, where, evading macho jerks and lads, the four girls land in the palm of Alien, a popular(?), up-and-coming(?), in the limelight-for-now rapper, played brilliantly by James Franco. Alien is a slender Post Malone with less artistic integrity than your least favourite musician. His music is filled with faux-wisdom about success, although his success is subjective. If you define success as doing literally nothing but show up at parties and rap and preach vague, crowd-pleasing lines to drunk college-goers, then Alien is up with there Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg. Alien claims to see something in the four girls and bails them out of court when the going gets tough for them (they join a party with some class A drugs and get busted by the police). Initially sceptical as to why a stranger would invest so much money in their freedom, this confusion turns into acceptance and they decide to stick around with this part-time rapper, part-time drug and gang kingpin. From here on, the film shifts from coping with existential disillusion to dealing with existential disillusion with the help of money, guns, drugs, and sex.
Alien’s story could be perceived as a reflection of modern ambition, which is to achieve a lot with a little. Alien isn’t talented in the conventional manner, but he’s managed to achieve materialistic success by being himself. However, this is a paradox as Alien’s entire image and character and essence is built upon his marketability to his audience. On several instances, there are cross-references between Franco’s character and the church community that Faith decided to depart from. Alien, like the church, also offers an overwhelming but inclusive community, one where anything is possible, except through crossing the line closer towards the devil than to God. Alien is also the worst culprit of the aforementioned theme of affirmations. When showing off his gun collection and his crib, Alien relentlessly brags “Look at my shit! Look at all my shit! Look at my shit!” The repetition of the same line is empty but, due to the confidence in which he preaches it, is convincing in it’s worth. This is the currency out here, and without the four women to show it off to, it’s worth nothing at all. Much like our self-aware social media generation, if it’s not online and hence not seen by anyone, does it even matter or did it even happen?
Skirmishes, of course, amplify and intensify as their journey down the rabbit hole develops. Cotty gets hit in the arm by a stray bullet during a late night/early morning patrol. She goes back home, leaving only Brit and Candy to remain. You question what’s holding their interest. Is it anything at all, the power, the rebellion? Or is it the lack of anything to return home to at all? Either way, the two remaining are too deep into it to remove themselves now. Their transformation complete, they now rock bright pink balaclavas and neon green bikinis, though some form of modern-day battle wear. The film climactically finishes with an anti-climax, a gunfight that sees Alien drop dead in seconds. His abrupt and undignified departure could be seen as symbolic of the fleeting fame and fortune of internet celebrities and the monumental impact that the loss of fame can have on an individual. In narrative terms, it’s another unconventional U-turn that is thrown upon us as an audience, making us question our own sense of invincibility that comes hand in hand with success and power. Or, if you’re in total hatred of Franco’s character, it’s an entertaining and bittersweet, darkly comic demise for a self-afflicted comic-book style anti-hero.
Is Spring Breakers essential viewing? Maybe. It’s unique, and if you appreciate a film that is utterly confusing given how the tale would normally be told in a far more conventional and universally appealing blockbuster format, it’s well worth checking out. Whether or not it stands on its own is a subjective matter. The coherent yet loose path in which the tale of Spring Breakers is told is powerful in its creation of atmosphere. Like a holiday you’ve been on, you do remember key moments and scenes, but not due to the exact nature of characterisation and emotional contingency. Instead, the lighting of a location, a song, the costumes, its these subtleties in the film that amount to its impact of creating a vivid, nocturnal and somehow familiar world. The film isn’t without its flaws, however, and these positive factors also exemplify some of these flaws. Characters are more or less indistinguishable, but I find that hard to criticise as I think that’s the point. These party-girls-gone-wild could be anyone, Alien could be anyone, these part-time drug dealers and gangsters could be anyone. Also, the non-dramatic characters aren’t depicted as heroes or icons with cool or memorable lines because they aren’t heroes or icons. However, inarguably, the futility of the characters and their ambitions will not be enough justification for some audience members to part with their precious time. Likewise, the film bears almost no likeable characters, so undoubtedly some viewers will deem the experience as pointless.
If you’re like me, however, certain scenes will prove redemptive. Notably, a sunset-drenched, acoustic rendition of Everytime by Britney Spears, performed by Alien and his piano is a standout sequence which is demonstrative of the absurdity of Spring Breakers. Iconic and parody-able values aside (which the film has somehow managed to escape the clutches of over the years), this montage, part bikini and balaclava-clad, shotgun-toting women signing Britney Spears around a piano, part slow-motion armed robbery montage, is one of the finest moments I’d seen in a film in a while. It’s unusual, enticing, entertaining, outrageous, provocative, and bizarre, but also gorgeously shot, edited, scored, and immensely tactile. To reprise my comment about the surreal memories of a holiday, this scene hits the nail on the head. It’s fever dreamish, pleasant, yet nightmarish and an odd sight to behold. Interpret it as a reflection of degenerative youth culture or just go for the ride openminded, whichever route you decide, it’ll most likely be one you’ll remember.
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