We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 204

a free-floating look at Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers

though the year is still young, this could be the ballsiest film of 2013. it would've been transgressive enough having the gigging lunatic behind this directing a beach party movie starring Disney Ch. actresses and scored by Skrillex, but i don't think Korine has it in him to do something that isn't strange, and Spring Breakers fits perfectly among his filmography, the glitz being turned into a darkly comic reflection of its self; a long form music video that subtly exposes every sordid amoral detail of the spring break "culture" in a post Girls Gone Wild world, where a new generation informed by Dub-Step, Grand Theft Auto, and Bang Bros take what in the past were fun-loving MTV shenanigans and mutate it into a neon basked blood-orgy that's too nihilistic to be considered lashing out.

none of this is surprising if you've followed the career path of Harmony Korine, who first courted controversy in 1995 with his script for the Larry Clarke directed Kids, showcasing teenage promiscuity in a post-AIDS NYC, then continued in 1997 with a putrid slice of decaying americana known as Gummo, his directorial debut about the day in the life of the bizarre residents of an economically shattered Ohio suburb (also the first film to use violent black metal on the soundtrack), and went even further down into the sinking cellar with Julian Donkey Boy and the afforlinked Trash Humpers. whether you love or loath him, Korine's vision is all his own, and he hasn't really changed his narrative methods or even the traits of his characters for Spring Breakers. they're bored, aloof, sexually uninhibited... they're just way prettier, prefer Britney Spears to Bethlehem, and are in a sunnier locale.

i don't really feel like examining the film at the moment (i'll check it again on DVD and expand on these thoughts), but i am very happy to see a film that's actually challenging getting a fairly wide release. more later maybe.