Watched: The Bling Ring
I wanted very much to like this - I admire Sofia Coppola as a director, and there was potential here for something artistic, but ended up being the flatter cousin to Spring Breakers. It’s a film about some profoundly unpleasant and superficial people (based on their less pretty real-world counterparts) who could almost be accused of doing something admirable - stealing from the super-rich for personal gain - if they weren’t driven by the same awful values that drive celebrity and the entertainment industry.
That’s not necessarily an issue, though - the characters in Spring Breakers were equally odious, but the way Harmony Korine structured that film as a drunken, hallucinogenic fever dream is what made the movie the fascinating thing that it is. There are hints at style in this film - loud, blaring rap music, a cast of characters that sometimes feel hyper-real - but for the most part everything is played straight, with little stylistic embellishment. Like Zero Dark Thirty, this is another film that suffers by taking a critical and visual distance from the subject matter. There is very little presentation here, whether in the dialogue or the way the movie is put together.
Bit of a shame, really. This could have been deeply satirical, or tragic, or even powerfully existentially hollow, but instead it just feels a little bland.
Emma Watson is fun to watch, though.