Spring Breakers

Spring Break - the spring break that allows young students in the US to finally let off some steam. The break from the hard college life is then also used for debauched parties with lots of alcohol and sex. Friends Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) and Faith (Selena Gomez) also dream of escaping their dreary lives in Florida on spring break. Unfortunately, they lack the necessary change for the trip to the party paradise. But a solution to this problem is quickly found: the girls want to do it like a video game and simply get the money with the help of a robbery. The plan works - but the girls have crossed a line that catapults them into a dangerous spiral. And so it's no wonder that the friends are picked up and arrested by the police at a drug party. This problem also seems to be solved quickly when the charismatic dealer Alien (James Franco) pays the bail for the girls. Now the party can go on. But for the Spring Breakers, the time for carefree partying is long over.

With his screenplay for Larry Clark's cult film Kids, Harmony Korine had drawn an unsparing and very authentic picture of New York youth at the time in 1995. The film became an acclaimed generational portrait, which Korine in some ways continues in his latest directorial effort, Spring Breakers. The filmmaker, who likes to be called Hollywood's enfant terrible, once again immerses himself in a youth scene whose superficiality and lack of direction he exposes in garish images and tedious monotony.

That in itself may have a certain appeal and often hits the nail on the head. It's interesting that the very world in which the girls seek to escape their drab daily lives is portrayed as extremely boring and just plain exciting at first glance through constantly repeating sequences of wild parties, bare-breasted girls, and unrestrained drinking. The problem with this is that the monotony of these images is quickly transferred to the viewer as well. Since the protagonists are (deliberately) all drawn completely superficial and unsympathetic (even the skimpiest bikinis don't help), the dialogues at least in their immediate and not more closely scrutinized effect are hard to undercut in terms of lack of content and the story seems to only approach its bloody climax from one party scene to the next, it is extremely difficult to maintain interest in the events.

It may be that Korine achieves a certain authenticity with statements that the violence is like that in a video game, or with the visuals aimed at pure surface appeal. But what's the point of great realism and a certain ingenuity in setup and dramaturgy if all of that is hidden under a jumble of irrelevancies and meaningless dialogue? Korine seems to want to swim against the tide with all his might. This has positive effects, such as Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez really ingeniously playing against their image as former Disney-beauties or James Franco, who can hardly be surpassed in greasiness. But it also makes a negative impact in that the film hides its message so well that it becomes a shallow product of immeasurable boredom itself. There may be a few viewers for whom the whole thing makes sense and who will go on to see a second Kids in Spring Breakers. But those who don't will shake their heads in annoyance after a few minutes here and be disproportionately angry that the Bikini Girls have not only stolen innocent people's money, but also moviegoers' time. Therefore: only quite conditionally and also only for fans of Larry Clark's films worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp