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Movie Review: The Bling Ring

Gregory Fichter

If Harmony Korine hadn’t already made the year’s boldest statement on the amoral, thrill-seeking hedonism of 21st-century adolescence in his sensory-assaulting, taboo-teasing, and surprisingly thoughtful Spring Breakers, then Sofia Coppola’s take on the insta-infamy of “The Bling Ring” gang – a band of privileged young women who started burglarizing celebrities in the Hollywood Hills just a handful of years ago – might have had more impact. The subject fits perfectly into Coppola’s narrow wheelhouse: a story about young women (and their gay accomplice/stylist) surrounded by excessive wealth, ennui, and shallow social goals given gravitas by the late Harris Savides’ distant but observant photography and Coppola’s intuitive direction of young female leads (including a few new faces).

Basing The Bling Ring on a detailed, damning 2010 Vanity Fair article titled “The Suspects Wore Louboutins,” Coppola’s film diagnoses the ugly, narcissistic values of a modern America obsessed with status and fame as the primary cause/excuse of why, in 2008-09, a small band of mostly-entitled teens met at an alternative high-school for under-performing students and delinquents, bonded over gossip culture and boutique-brand fashion (implicating the way the entertainment world’s omnipresent PR machine can convince us that we know these celebrities), then – with the convenient privacy invasions of Google, TMZ, and other websites – set about a spree of grand larceny. Operating out of a plush Los Angeles suburb, their miscreant behaviors are either ignored by spectral parents in the “biz” or a New Age-y dimwit of a mother like the one Leslie Mann plays here – her fuzzy ”Law of Attraction” exceptionalism, Adderall prescriptions for the kids, and celeb-focused homeschooling are indicted as a symptom early on, as her girls (one of whom, Nicki, coquettishly-played by a transformed Emma Watson, will be key to the robberies) yawn through another “lesson” about empowerment through Angelina Jolie worship.

Swiftly going from cat-burglarizing “friends” and unlocked luxury cars, the first accomplices: ringleader Rachel Lee (Katie Chang) and her fashion-forward buddy Marc (Israel Broussard, his sympathetic, chubby face resembling Sofia Coppola’s brother Roman more than his real-life counterpart Nick Prugo), recruit more empty vessels to entice with their way of “shopping” – pilfering jewelry, cash, clothes, and even paintings from a roster of mostly C-list celebs too flush with luxury items to even notice they’ve been hit (I can’t believe the number of rich people who never set a house alarm or, in the case of vacuous Paris Hilton, go ahead and leave a key under the welcome mat!).

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In creepy-quiet scenes like the break-in at Hilton’s house (her real home is used and she cameos in a club scene), there is an undeniable voyeuristic thrill in taking in all of the opulence, even while seething about the social cognitive dissonance someone like her must possess. But, strangely I felt Ms. Hilton’s personal violation at the hands of her greedy stalkers because Savides’ camera keeps a judgmental distance from the thieves’ actions, observing rather than endorsing (an accusation being thrown around in other reviews). The best sequence is a silent strike on The Hills star Audrina Patridge’s hilltop, art deco place – a Peeping Tom’s dream of nothing but windows stacked on windows, which Savides trains his camera on from another distant hill to rob the duo of thieves of their humanity and reduce them to hungry rats scurrying about while a security camera records the act that will eventually bring down the conspirators.

Leslie Mann and Emma Watson in “The Bling Ring.” © 2013 – A24.

Abstract moments aside, The Bling Ring is Coppola’s most pedestrian work, slick but cinematically safe and looking for a commercial, young audience, with Valley-speak dialogue, Rick Ross songs, and knowingly-vapid performances to quench Summer movie thirsts – by telling a brisk, colorful, detailed story, she gets away from the tedium that sunk in on her indulgent last movie Somewhere (2010), but still cannot hide her weaknesses in dialogue and character connection. The young cast is tasked with playing unsympathetic, corrupt people (who, in reality, continue to both play on their unrepentant behavior on reality TV and spin untruths with the aid of lawyers and enabling parents). It’s hard to enjoy a movie about such sociopathic, misguided people, but the situation is so current, outrageous, and endemic, that The Bling Ring is probably a much scarier movie choice than something like World War Z, since the beat of this true-crime riff is the darkening heart of a media-poisoned generation (rather than mythical monsters): with the likes of Lohan, Hilton, Patridge, et al as their moral compass.

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Gregory Fichter

Greg toiled for years in the hallowed bowels of the legendary Thomas Video and has studied cinema as part of the Concentration for Film Studies and Aesthetics at Oakland University. He has hosted the cult movie night "Celluloid Sundays" at The Belmont in Hamtramck, MI. and enjoys everything from High Trash to Low Art.

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