SIFF Review: "The Bling Ring"

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 13 June 2013 20:25

Written by Matt Oakes

"The Bling Ring"
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Starring Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Emma Watson, Leslie Mann, Claire Julien, Taissa Farmiga
Crime, Drama
90 Mins
R 

In a funny way, The Bling Ring is Sofia Coppola's most accessible film to date. As cognizantly distant and empty-headed as the teens-on-a-tear at the center of the film are, Coppola takes aim at the celebrity-woozy, status-driven ethos of the eGeneration and blasts a cartoonish hole in the midst of it. At the center of this distorted "me, me, me" psychology is a generational confusion of money for fame that we've all grown accustomed to, and likely sickened by, since the proliferation of reality television. Behind the mass thievery in the film of designer clothing, excessive jewelry and cold hard cash and beyond the drivel of faux-postmodern wisdom, competent and unexpected camera work from the late Harris Savides drives Coppola's picture towards a lingering statement on the despondent emptiness of a life pursuing status and fame.

Based on the Vanity Fair article "The Suspect Wore Louboutins" by Nancy Jo Sales, The Bling Ring tells the mostly true story of a group of high school students who rob the houses of celebrities with whom they are obsessed. Our gateway to this band of bandits is Marc, in a breakout performance from Israel Broussard, who on multiple occasions tells us that he's got self-confidence issues. When he transfers to a new school for dropouts and flunkies, Marc meets Katie Chang's Rebecca. From the moment we're introduced, there's no dreamy facade to Rebecca's opportunist persona. This bitch likes to rob and steal while blowing lines of pow-pow.

If anyone's the antagonist here, it's Rebecca. Cavalier to the bitter end, she tests how far she can push the envelope, breaking into Paris Hilton's house a total of six times, all the while tugging her gang of cohorts along by their brand-possessed principles. Hung on that leash is Nicki, played by valley girl accent sporting Emma Watson, who at home is fed Adderall like they are Skittles and schooled by her mother, in an airy bit role by Leslie Mann, in the teachings of 'The Secret'.

As a dueling critique of Hollywood's dazed home life and a featherbrained alibi for the perps, Copolla withholds judgment on these dazed socialites, challenging her audience to pinpoint the first stone tossed in innocence lost. At some point down the rabbit hole, society has shuffled responsibility over to this new brand of child, educated in hokey spiritual nonsense and babysat by TVs, instead of casting the blame on the real problem: these oblivious and detached hill dwelling parents. While Mann is the only parent of the group we get to spend any time with, her fruitless optimism and bloated self-righteousness is a obvious poke towards these part-time Hollywood parents.

Outside the house, these kids want all the glitz and glory without any of the hard work, just like the pop icons they envy: Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, Lindsay Lohan, Rachel Bilson, Brian Austin Green, Megan Fox, and Orlando Bloom (with no hard feelings towards Orlando who is definitely the odd one out here). With no shortage of burglary sequences, Coppola uses repetition to reconcile the commonplace custom that this ritual has become for Rebecca, Marc, Nicki and Co. and set up their hubris that leads to their ill-fated downfall.

The crimes of vacuous hoarding may only be piled on the young burglars but taking a second look at these undeserving, inherited celebrities, it is really them who have piled high their riches like modern day sultans. Paris Hilton is the prime example of the root of the problem.

Her gaudy omnipresence is one big show, an advertisement for herself, and with her each and every world-trotting party broadcasted, it's no wonder no one pulled off this stunt beforehand. Her paparazzi-heavy public persona and apathetic accent to fame are the chief inspiration for these events. For Hilton, from nothing comes everything. All these kids want is a taste of that sweet nectar too. Even a partial bystander can't entirely dismiss the teen's stance: when Hilton can't even notice a pair of shoes gone missing amongst a room dedicated entirely to shoes, where is the great loss?

This quandary is a most popular debate topic in philosophical ethic classes. If you were incapable of providing food for your family, would it be acceptable to steal from the rich in order to do so? How do you quantify or measure the hedonic utility acquired from the loaf of bread gained or on the other side of the “equation,” the loaf of bread lost... etc. While there's obviously no bone-protruding starving kids here, the parallel of utility, although on a much more superficial scale, is still intriguing.

Part of the irony undercutting the film lies in Hilton's willingness to become a part of the feature as well as offering up her actual house and belongings for the film to shoot in. Whether or not she was attempting to garnish sympathy is unclear but her gratuitous lifestyle hardly warrants any empathy from a civilized audience. While Coppolla refuses to cross the line into aggrandizing, she comments silently on the naivety of the unwarranted wealth, dissecting the ludicrous notion that one is more deserved than the other. Any commentary here is soft-spoken but still leaves a lasting impression.

Obviously there is a moral line to tow about the thievery bit but at what point do we say enough is enough? Culturally, we've encouraged this Bonnie and Clyde lifestyle from the legends of Robin Hood to the much more recent Now You See Me but socially, it is still a damnable offense. Regardless of our infatuation and rooting for these infractions in fictional situations, we still scoff when it goes down in real life.

It's hard to weigh in entirely on the central issue of who is to blame because it's not entirely clear whether Coppola's aim was to remain impartial or if she was just empathetically out in left field but the film, like the court that throws the book at them, is almost unsympathetic to these high-school aged children branded as criminals and hauled off to federal prison. They are not heroes, they're just dumb kids taking selfies and bragging to their schoolmates about their spoil who are sent to rot in jail. We've all reveled in the downfall of those elitists in our lives riding on high but, paradoxically enough, we can't help but pity their fall.

B-

• < Prev
• Next >