Spring Breakers
Harmony Korine applies a sensationalist, satirical "wet" to America's proverbial Dream.
Harmony Korine (USA, Special Presentations)
Friday, September 7, 6 p.m.
Ryerson Theatre (43 Gerrard Street East)
Sunday, September 9, 3 p.m.
Bloor Hot Docs Cinema (506 Bloor Street West)
Friday, September 14, 9 p.m.
Bloor Hot Docs Cinema (506 Bloor Street West)
Girls Gone Wild goes art house in Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine’s formally hypnotic, frighteningly hedonistic, and frequently hilarious perversion of the American Dream. Calculatedly enlisting a roster of tween idols (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson, joined by Rachel Korine) as his agents of pleasure-addled anarchy, Korine chronicles the misadventures of four small-town coeds hell-bent on fulfilling their fantasy of escaping their dreary surrounds for the Floridian sunshine and chemical-fuelled carnality of spring break.
The film teeters for much of its first half on the brink of (literally) naked exploitation, but the mid-film arrival of James Franco as a wigged-out, white-trash gangsta rapper propels Spring Breakers to surreal, richly satirical heights. Franco, who is no doubt still picking bits of the film’s scenery out of his grill, is a brilliant surprise, and so too is Spring Breakers‘ third-act left turn towards an empowering, albeit thoroughly warped, finale.
