Iconoclastic director Harmony Korine unveiled what may be one of the most twisted spring break movies in recent memory with a screening heralded by a roving motorcade of scooter drivers in bikinis and ski masks and lasting into the wee hours Monday at the South by Southwest film festival.
“Spring Breakers,” positioned as both a celebration and an indictment of the annual bacchanal, follows four bikini-clad college students through a series of improbable adventures. After financing their excursion to the Florida coast with a robbery, the young women descend farther into the criminal underworld than intended.
The movie has been highly anticipated thanks to a widely viewed online trailer showing former Disney starlets transformed into heavily armed, lightly clad mean girls bent on having a good time at all costs.
As the venue for a domestic premiere, the promoters chose South by Southwest, held in the college town of Austin.
Asked whether the whole affair should be read as satire, Korine said, “I more want you to have a physical experience.”
And the movie?
“It does have its cake and eat it too,” said James Franco, the wide-ranging actor best known as a villain in the Spider-Man series and starring as a cornrow-headed thug in “Spring Breakers.”
The film also features Selena Gomez, the 20-year-old pop music singer known as Justin Bieber’s ex-girlfriend and for her role on Disney’s now defunct “Wizards of Waverly Place.”
When the lights went down, Korine’s fever dream of gunplay, body shots and girls gone wild found a receptive audience.
In a Q-and-A session, an audience member asked Korine about the open-ended final scene.
“I end it there because I want you to dream on it,” he said, adding, “Why do you want to be told everything all the time?”
A Similar But Different Take On A Feature Film Debut
Similar But Different is not only the moniker for the directorial duo of Dani Girdwood and Charlotte Fassler but also in some respects an apt description of their feature filmmaking debut, My Fault: London (Amazon MGM Studios). The movie, which premiered last week on Amazon Prime Video, has on one level some select elements similar to what we’re accustomed to in the young adult (YA) universe--which helps make it familiar, comfortable and relatable--yet at the same time My Fault: London brings a new, decidedly different dimension to YA entertainment, uniquely meshing action-adventure, mystery, music, romance and humor. The film captures the feel of the underground London culture, lending an authenticity and contemporary vibe that’s a departure from the norm when it comes to the adaptation of YA literature. This mesh of similar but different has served the film well in that there was some target audience skepticism initially over the notion of doing an English adaptation of the popular, fan-favorite Spanish-language novel “Culpa Mia,” the first of the “Culpables” trilogy. Thus it’s most gratifying for Girdwood and Fassler to see the social media response after the release of My Fault: London, with many viewers enthusiastically embracing the film. My Fault: London introduces us to Noah (portrayed by Asha Banks) who’s uprooted from her U.S. hometown, having to leave her boyfriend and friends behind to move with her mother (Eve Macklin) to London. Mom has a new rich husband (Ray Fearon) in London and their new residence is a mansion. There Noah meets Nick (Matthew Broome), her new stepbrother. They have an immediate mutual dislike for each other which blossoms into something quite different over time. Along the... Read More