Spring Breakers

Spring Breakers is a film about love and anarchy. In quotation marks and with the colour palette of Skittles. Korine uniquely blends a trashy plot and hyper-stylised MTV/R&B/YouTube aesthetics with a “flowing” form of storytelling, such as that found in The Tree of Life, for example. The unvarying, hypnotising trance rhythm, the constant repetition of lines (in the style of Chuck Palahniuk’s novellas) and the recycling of shots (or, as the case may be, the ways in which they are composed), leads to a dramaturgical compression of all scenes to the same level. They do not have any particular aim, like the female protagonists as they live out their permanent vacation, nor does the film escalate (conversely, the scenes in which we would expect more action are shot in an absolutely disinterested manner – see, for example, the restaurant robbery filmed in one shot through two panes of glass). Not much changes with the arrival of Alien, since gangsterism turns out be just as repetitive as anything else. It does not matter WHEN something happened or will happen. By jumping back and forth in time, the film rather prevents us from constructing a coherent storyline. The main thing is that something is happening right now. We are constantly kept in a state of being overwhelmed by audio-visual stimuli. Reality and make-believe, high and low, raw shots and lyrical shots all merge into one. This is clearly an attempt to approximate the way in which the female protagonists and Alien experience their surroundings, as the film takes on Alien’s perspective for some time in the second half. Conversely, Faith and Cotta’s return to reality is filmed altogether realistically, without visual enhancements creating the impression of an endless acid trip, when the colours seem to be bolder and the movement slower. Another subjectivising element is the voice-over (calls home) consisting of sentences that starkly contrast with what we see on the screen. Is this really how today’s youth imagine paradise? In this matter, Korine’s frantic postmodern collage is just as indeterminate as his attitude toward the female protagonists in unicorn ski masks and bikinis and toting Kalashnikovs like some sort of commercialised version of Pussy Riot. However, political matters are unimportant to them (instead of listening to a lecture on civil rights, they draw pictures of penises), as are gender issues (they do nothing to stop Alien from turning them into more of his “shit”). They want to destroy only because they do not see any sense in more established values. There is no doubt that we should despise them, but what they do is filmed so seductively… 80% (05.04.2018)

Spring Breakers catches your eye with its perfect visuals and sound design, the neon aesthetic, the nudity, the summer fun and the cool sounding phrase “spring break”. But in reality, they are just intermediaries of the emptiness and shallowness of party boys and party girls. It’s a lure to trap the viewer; pretty depressing art, basically. But I feel that everything important it has to say is said in the first half hour and the rest just recycles it (engagingly so), although it’s likely that there’s also some meaning in that. “Everytime” is hands down one the movie scenes of the year. (27.06.2013)

Tritt ein in die Leere der Masturbationsphantasien von Liebhabern der Beach-Bitch-Party-Tits-Beer-Guns-Ästhetik. Ein fluoreszierender Traum an der Grenze zwischen Antithesis und Beeindruckung durch die künstliche Mythologie von MTV-Clips. Hypnotisch, engagiert, provokativ, subversiv (Britney Spears trifft auf Pussy Riot) und vor allem - James Franco ist für die Rolle des Aliens geradezu geboren worden. "This is the fuckin' American dream. This is my fuckin' dream, y'all! All this sheeyit! Look at my sheeyit!" (30.03.2013)

If anything succeeded, it was the mutilation of all audience expectations. Freshness, lightness, and natural passion are swept away by sophisticated and desperately repetitive grabbing of everything that dances, shakes, or moves in any unconventional way at all. And yet the real low blow is the script, clearly written by a thirteen-year-old boy desperately bored at home during the holidays whose abundant imagination is shaping a story about what the unattainable group of girls from the nearby high school might be doing at that moment. And it's probably not surprising that as a result, neither the characters, dialogue, story, or anything else actually work. Maybe just a few good songs that might evoke a summer mood under different circumstances and the hypnotic Cliff Martinez soundtrack, which is nonetheless running on empty in this mess. (19.07.2013)

An artistic rendition of a girls’ trip to Florida or a perverse probe into the world of booze, drugs and weapons? Korine wants to film art, but emptiness filled with repeating scenes or whole sentences, strange lighting and filters (at least imho) just isn’t art. Empty prattle about friendship, supported by emotional imbalance and a freaky ending that brings the young generation a message involving a really good slapping. A huge positive role is James Franco’s Alien who overacts as much as possible, enjoying the caricature of a white black gansta/rapper to the last drop. Ingenious manipulator or stoned nut-job? I’d like to see a prequel showing his rise. (01.09.2013)

Maybe a little more alternative than would be appropriate. From the audience's perspective, it’s a very confusing and "unpleasant" film that says quite a lot and even makes sense, but it’s poorly executed (the dramaturgy, the dialogues) and confusingly shot and unfinished (the editing, a number of wtf scenes) that only few will grasp and extract some of that film gold that is somewhere in there. Basically, a definition of today's era and youth, but the viewer could easily overlook it and end up thinking it was just mindless rubbish. (22.08.2013)

The final form of the film is the polar opposite of what I originally expected from it. I went into it expecting pure teenage masturbation over the backside of Selena Gomez and her friends, which someone like Stifler would have summed up simply with the words "boobs, titties, hooters, knockers", but in the end I got a truly serious criminal plot with an execution so provocative, novel and ironic that it was simply irresistible. Korine laughed in my face, filmed it in his own way and according to his own rules, and did it extremely well. It's a pity that by the end he went a bit overboard with the laughs and that he repeated some of the "jokes" so often that they lost all credibility. And it's a shame that Selena packed up halfway through the film and never showed up again :-) Quite an interesting surprise, but unfortunately it doesn't deserve more than 55% after the first viewing. (29.06.2013)

Ich musste für ein paar Tage absolut abschalten, nicht an die Arbeit denken und mich nur entspannen, u. a. bei Filmen und Serien. Ich hätte mir nichts Besseres aussuchen können als einen Film, der im Grunde keine Handlung hat, dafür aber eine verdammt gute Atmosphäre, der ein visuelles Erlebnis bietet (für Männer wohl auch ein intensives) und eine gut gewählte Musik offeriert. Ich musste überhaupt nicht nachdenken, mir nur ein Glas Wodka eingießen und gedankenlos den bis zur Unkenntlichkeit maskierten Franco, die reizende Selena mit der sexy Stimme und eine unendliche Frühlingsparty anschauen. Frühlingskinder lieben die Frühjahrsferien... (08.04.2016)

The form slightly prevails over the content, which got me. Great, atmospheric music enhances the recurring shots, jumps in time continuity, and other elements that are used - sound suppression and its replacement with musical accompaniment, cutting from detailed shots to distant ones, etc. Everything leads to the fact that the film has exactly the right depressive tone that was supposed to affect the viewer. Exposed breasts and alcohol orgies, which accompany us throughout the film, are ultimately more of a mockery, underlining the fact that such entertainment is not really it. Selena Gomez, or rather her character, says one beautiful sentence: "I want to go home. I didn't imagine it like this. It's not fair, it shouldn't have been like this." It shouldn't have been like this, at least according to the posters, but the result is excellent. Surprisingly good. (12.11.2013)

Admittedly, like many people, I was fooled by the trailer that promised a completely different sort of entertainment than what I eventually got. From the beginning, it looked like a celebration of the stupid American teen generation, which I didn’t even think I’d manage to watch until the end. That’s how idiotic it seemed at the beginning. Then you’re just waiting for the girls to run out of all the booze and drugs, then feel a little sorry that the spring break is over and then the final credits roll. But Korine goes against all your expectations and breaks them down one by one. After much deliberation, I'm giving it 4 stars. Of course, it has its weaker moments and it does get boring at times, but the way this work was perfectly thought out will hit you eventually (well, not everyone, I guess). Suddenly, you realize that it’s criticism of the current completely vacuous generation, getting high on drugs and booze, always looking for more thrills, while becoming more and more entangled in a vicious circle, with the following rule: whoever escapes it, wins. PS: The people behind the campaign for this movie (as well as those who did the casting) should receive at least half of the earnings. That's what got this movie into cinemas, and it definitely paid off. (27.06.2013)