Spring Breakers

Enter the void of masturbation fantasies of lovers of beach bitch parties, tits, beer and guns aesthetics. A fluorescent dream on the edge between anti-thesis and interest in the artificial mythology of MTV clips. Hypnotic, engaging, provocative, subversive (Britney Spears meets Pussy Riot) and most importantly - James Franco was born for the role of the Alien. "This is the fuckin' American dream. This is my fuckin 'dream, y'all! All this sheeyit! Look at my sheeyit!" (03/30/2013)

This spiritual film for a world without God reveals to viewers a planet made up of dreams in music-video hyper-reality that can actually be tangible. It’s enough to just strike the right pose and time is suddenly transformed from an flow into unnoticeable a looping collage, where minutes do not tick by, but pulse like neon lights. However, this can all dissipate very rapidly – all it takes is to step out of the pose for a moment, but then there is now way back. On the cultural/generational surface, Korine’s DJ-like spinning isn’t subversive in such a way that it would result in an appealing gesture as in the previous generational film Kids, written by Korine, but exactly the opposite. Instead of a warning, Spring Breakers is an intoxicating and sensually intense temptation. It is a materialisation of the enchanted circle of hyped-up posing encouraged by pop culture and becomes a part of that. If gangstas have been watching Scarface on loop up to this point, now college kids will put on Spring Breakers as the ultimate demonstration of how to get properly pissed off. It’s absurd to read reflections whose writers take an elitist approach to defining themselves against a supposed audience that will leave the cinema annoyed or devastated because they had expected another Disney farce with Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, and yet they enthusiastically chant, “Spring break forever, bitches.” They thus oddly illustrate that Korine is not in the position of a moraliser or an unbiased observer, or a biased connoisseur in the mould of John Waters. On the contrary, he represents for viewers the same kind of devil/enticer that Alien is for the film’s female protagonists. Those who don’t escape in time will give themselves over to him without reservation. (04/04/2013)

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. (07/19/2013)

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. (06/27/2013)

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. (11/12/2013)