spring breakers- Brief review about the meaning of Spring Breakers

                                      

director -harmony korine
cast - Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson 
genre -comedy , crime , drama
plot summary - Four college girls who land in jail after robbing a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation find themselves bailed out by a drug and arms dealer who wants them to do some dirty work.
release date - 22 march 2013
my rating - 7/10


I don't want to talk about the storyline much (you can read that in other reviews), I just want to point out the things that need more attention to my opinion. Why? Because all this fun that is really 'in your face' may distract from the underlying, perhaps much more interesting, message.

Spring Breakers shows the extreme party many young people dream of. Dancing, naked bodies, beach, money, music, beautiful young people, lots of liquor and drugs, the ultimate high all day and all night long. I wonder if the same version will be released in the States (because it contains quite some full frontal nudity)

The shady side to all of this 'joy' starts already at the beginning of the story when three of the four girls violently rob a diner for the cash needed to pay for this vacation. The last girl tags along for the trip, but is the most innocent of them all. She is the one that is religious, and she obviously leaves the party madness first, before it gets really bad. 

The film is well edited, and the music really adds to the experience. Though the, first original, way of repeating sequences does soon get tiring towards the end. The film tries to convey you trough humor and the sexy appeal of it all, the same way the characters are swept along in their urge for limitless excitement and pleasure. The character of James Franco is most funny in his role, I especially recall the sentence "look at all my sh*t" next to his absurd piano scene, to be hilarious. One almost forgets he is a full blown criminal, all his guns an money and clothes are gathered by killing, distributing drugs and so on. As eventually two girls remain, they are getting more and more entangled in criminal activities.

This is what makes Spring Breakers actually a good movie: it shows how close this partying and fun really is to crime. Because booze, sex, drugs and all related lean very close to, or are directly connected to, the underworld. 

It's good that the film doesn't condemn fun or partying in general (although the religious girl getting out first got me suspicious).

It was a shame that the cast or director didn't mention this deeper meaning at the press conference, and the actresses only spoke about how they had 'such a great time' during the shooting.