Friday, June 21, 2013

Movie Review: "The Bling Ring" (Sofia Coppola, 2013)

HOLLOW BLING: SOFIA COPPOLA'S LATEST IS SURPRISINGLY EMPTY
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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