The true story of L.A. teens from comfortably affluent
families burglarizing the homes of celebrities is a big fat satirical target,
but Sofia Coppola is too empathetic a director to get too savage with her
filmmaking. In The Bling Ring she
approaches the subject with tenderness and understanding, creating a vivid look
into vacuousness. No frivolous froth or hysterical cautionary tale, this is a
film that's concerned deeply about shallowness without condescending. (Well,
okay, it's more like "rarely condescending.") Even if Coppola takes
shots at their societal surroundings, she doesn't knock the kids themselves or
the celebrity targets, some, like Paris Hilton, making brief cameos playing
themselves. It’s a film that’s often very funny, not because it’s
mean-spirited, but because it acknowledges the inherent seriousness of the
silliness in which the characters find themselves, a fact that escapes them for
much longer than you’d expect.
The film focuses on a group of stylish high schoolers who
conflate brand worship with aspiring towards celebrity. They see the kind of
famous represented by being a socialite in a dubiously real reality show like The Simple Life or The Hills and access to prestige brands that can be gained by it.
Not actual prestige, mind you; the brands are all they’re after. These are kids
who live in a town of celebrity and glamour of one kind or another. They spend
their lives so close (and yet so far) to the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
We see they’re frequently at a club Hilton, Kirsten Dunst and "a producer
of Entourage" frequent. This
group of kids takes advantage of the proximity of celebrity and the ease of
information access to do something so simple it’s amazing no one had thought to
take advantage of it before. They’re pioneers of a sort. The addresses of the
stars are a Google away, as is news of the celebrity travel plans and social
engagements.
At the core of the film are the ringleader (Katie Chang)
and the boy (Israel Broussard) who has a crush on her and is drawn into her
world. First, she opens unlocked cars and lifts money. Then, she moves on to
wandering into the mansions of vacationing classmates. Soon, she, he, and
eventually a small group of friends, go on riskier, more frequent trips,
loitering in empty homes of Hilton – she’s a favorite – and Lindsay Lohan,
Audrina Patridge (a star of The Hills),
Orlando Bloom, Megan Fox, and Rachel Bilson as well. There’s a sense of mob
mentality slowly bubbling up out of group dynamics as the crime escalates with
more and more brand-name purses, dresses, shoes, and shades lifted from the
target mansions. They’re showing off for each other, grabbing talismans of
cultural currency and imagining they have the lifestyles they feel they deserve.
Coppola and her cinematographers Harris Savides and
Christopher Blauvelt (who took over after Savides passed away) take a dynamic,
but composed approach to shooting these antics. I particularly loved a static
wide shot of a glassed-in home at night, rooms lighting up with the intruders
scrambling in. There's little Ocean’s
Eleven pleasing fizzle or Bonnie and
Clyde tonal whiplash here. Their capers are coldly presented. What at first
seems a surprising crime is drained of its surprise through repetition of the
act - the home invasions are frequent and similar - and a camera that observes
rather than sensationalizes. It’s all shiny surface, shallow, brightly lit by
day, by night, vivid montage, the big houses cool oasis in humid darkness. The
perspective from which Coppola views the events is easy and restrained,
comfortable watching and cataloguing the goings-on. She’s objective, but hardly
disinterested. The deceptive emptiness of the filmmaking sometimes makes this a
hard film to enjoy, but a rich film to reflect upon.
The camera lingers on logos and representations of
behavior. On laptop screens, gossip sites and Facebook converge. The Bling Ring
is performing for each other on much the same playing field as celebrities in
the public of the Internet. Their posts and their actions are both empty
gestures representing tedious lives barely covered by the impression of
activity. Even their break-ins lose the transgressive edge. They’re just as
bored and purposeless anywhere; burglarizing and partying is all the same to
them, shiny surfaces with which they can hide their emptiness. For the most
part, the celebrities they rob exhibit similar shallowness, celebrity and
lifestyles built solely around conspicuous consumption and living out tabloid
fantasy, where what got you famous or infamous isn’t as important as the
trappings of fame itself. (Though poor Bloom, Bilson and Fox, working actors,
get roped into the mess as well, throwing off the pattern.)
The Bling Ring itself is made up of characters who seem
like real kids, with some of the dialogue sounding so true in a you-couldn’t-write-something-so-perfectly-oblivious
way that it could be plucked right from depositions and the reality show that a
few of them would in real life end up on. The acting is loose and natural.
Especially good are Taissa Farmiga, who played the troubled teen in the first
season of American Horror Story and Emma
Watson, Harry Potter’s Hermione. Used
to playing smart young women, they prove themselves more than ever to be smart
performers as well. Playing these rich California girls, they let their eyes go
blank and accents drawl into Valley Girl stylings. They, as well as the other
girls (Claire Julien and George Rock, in their debuts), blend together in the
crowd scenes, all of them aspiring to stand out by fitting in. (That old
chestnut.) The group is full of performances impressively inhabited. All the
kids have a kind a vacant babbling, but it’s not limited to them. A mother played
by Leslie Mann, the only one we more than glimpse here, has a pop
pseudo-philosophy Secret-inspired
homeschooling curriculum built around dream boards, wishful thinking and
Adderall.
Coppola's film is an empathetic critique, even when the
walls of justice, as represented by cops, lawyers, and judges, close in on the
group. What felt consequence free for so long is suddenly not. The character
played by Watson gets the last word, her character shamelessly promoting herself
right up to the credits, claiming the crimes were a great “learning lesson,”
and trying to put in a plug for her website. It had me thinking of Repo Man’s famous death scene of a white
suburban punk in which the teen says "I know a life of crime has led me to
this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am." The Bling Ring doesn't allow its
characters this satirical insight. Society made them what they are and they'd
greedily lap up the attention as long as society would mention them in the same
breath as the people from whom they stole. They’re kids for whom being famous
is to have your face on TMZ and so infamy gets you just as far.
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