Spring Breakers
The missing Saints Row 3 adaptation, with some introspection casually thrown into the mix.
This has a runtime of 90 minutes, but the plot itself happens during 10 minutes, mixed with dazed and confused images of unbridled hedonism. It’s so unbridled, it even involves white ponies.
The main focus of the story is Selena Gomez, a god-fearing teen (but not uptight) who gets roped in by her “friends” into going nuts to a popular spring break destination. She gets more than what she bargained for, and gets back home after being arrested and bailed out by a repellent Alien played by Jimbo Franco.
The other three girls had originally come up with the idea of robbing a restaurant to raise money to getting to Florida, so they start doing the same for Alien. One of them gets shot, which spooks her and leads her home too.
This reality check is seen by the remaining gang as the walk of shame, so they continue being muscle (and just the right amount of fat) for the gangster creep. The final scene involves them assaulting the rival and getting Alien killed in the fray.
This leads to our 2 remaining leads riding into the sunset, at night.
This a very religious experience for the characters. They go on a metaphorical journey towards the dark pits of hell, but half of them are strong enough to fall by the wayside into sane, civilised behaviours. You never go full gangsta.
This is not some portrait of a generation, since screeds about young’uns being dumbass dopamine cravers are old hat, but it is a faithful portrait of a certain middle class alienation, easily swayed into “fun” by a lack of foresight and role models, coupled with teens being dumb. A philosophical conundrum for the ages.
Parents can straddle the line between helicopter and free range parenting, but on these borderline ages between childhood and adulthood, each person must find his own path.
It can’t even be dismissed as an American thing, considering there is a carbon copy version of it happening in Lloret del Mar and other Spanish resorts.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.