by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
Above: Katie Chang and Isreal Broussard
Many a disappointment is born
to begin well. Indeed, “The Bling Ring”
begins very well—after the credits roll with an electric smash, we see a kid
named Marc (played by Israel Broussard) starting his first day at a new high
school. It’s a bright, pale sunny Los
Angeles day, but Marc doesn’t look overjoyed.
He walks with his head bent. “Watch
it!” a girl snaps as she collides with his backpack. He doesn’t respond.
But Marc does make one friend. Her name is Rebecca (Katie Chang) and it
becomes clear right away that like Marc, she’s something different. She invites him to the beach a mere thirty
seconds after meeting him and as they chat and get high, it becomes clear that
they share something—a fascination with fashion and celebrity that is stronger
than what many people posses. From
there, they progress from getting to know each other to robbing the houses of
movie and TV stars, a journey that will lead their prettily bland lives into effervescent
notoriety.
As I’ve mentioned before, this is a strong setup. While the movie is an ensemble piece, writer-director
Sofia Coppola allows Marc (and Mr. Broussard to anchor much of the film). It’s a wise choice—Marc’s fear of being
caught makes him relatable, but so does his love for his partners in
crime. The image of Rebecca walking in
slow motion while Marc confesses to us that he loves her is at once poetically
plastic and wondrously beautiful. Yet
Rebecca is not as relatable as Marc.
Among the characters in the story, she’s the most passionate about
stealing from the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. But we never know why; we never understand
her motivation. Marc says it’s because
she wants to “be a part of the lifestyle” of those celebrities, but again I
have to ask: why? What’s really driving
her need to experience that lifestyle?
I must confess a temptation to ask Ms. Coppola this
question, though I have a feeling she’d ignore it. “The Bling Ring” is not concerned with
personalities or motives—it’s really about the robberies themselves. In scene after scene, the characters invade
celebrity homes, and we watch over and over again as they gasp over jewelry,
pairs of shoes, and “hidden” rolls of dollar bills. In some of these scenes, Marc’s fear of being
caught offers an electric jolt, but the others seem perfectly at ease lounging
in Paris Hilton’s “night club” room. As
a result, the robberies start to feel strangely repetitive and boring—because
they make up most of the story, they impart a feeling of narrative
constriction. Too rarely do we get to
see the characters’ own homes and by extension, too rarely do we get to see who
they really are.
I’m not quite sure what Ms. Coppola was going for with this
kind of storytelling. While this failure
to develop the characters fully could be seen as sloppiness, I suspect that it
was attempt to strip away the trappings of psychology so we could be immersed
in the discovery of stolen goods, what Marc calls “so many beautiful things.” But for me, this just doesn’t work. Crime is always a good cinematic subject but the
cast of “The Bling Ring” doesn’t see themselves as criminals. “Let’s go shopping,” Rebecca says as they
enter Paris Hilton’s house and that’s exactly what these ventures are to them—shopping. This kind of relaxed approach to theft drains
the suspense and other qualities that make thievery dynamic in movies.
There’s also the problem that most of the characters are
unendurable. As Rebecca, Ms. Chang seeps
up the camera’s light to beautiful effect, especially in the aforementioned
slow motion shot. Yet as a person, she’s
remarkably shallow. Yet she’s not just a
shallow character—she’s also portrayed in a shallow manner. We may be permitted to gaze into Mr.
Broussard’s eyes, but we never become close to the other characters in the same
way. Then there’s Nicki (Emma Watson),
easily the most vapid burglar of the bunch.
I was looking forward to seeing Ms. Watson playing an unabashedly
obnoxious L.A. kid, but she turns out to be a stunningly annoying screen presence
in this film, something which is best personified during an interview where she
keeps telling her mother to shut up. She
does it so many times that like the robberies, her hushing becomes a sort of
boring mantra.
Thus: a shallow movie about shallow people. In an essence, that is “The Bling Ring.” Yet there are so many moments when it seems
that a better film wants to emerge from the endless cavalcade of shopping
sprees. Think of the black and white
scene where Marc dances in his room. In
that moment, he seems to be expressing so kind of genuine exuberance, something
he can’t share with the rest of the world.
In a film with so much emotionless fakery, that truth stands out like a
jewel, albeit one that can’t be stolen it is as non-corporeal as it is
beautiful.
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