The new threat of financial collapse It is yet another global crisis to be added for the current generation, which never stops seeing the promises of prosperity that supposedly came from effort and hard work come true. A very liberal mentality that societies like the American have embraced to the extreme, with which they have built the concept of the “dream” so typical of which they do not come off even with the successive signs of structural fractures.
There is no doubt, yes, that the 2008 crash was a turning point that was reflected in their culture, especially in the cinema that captured that economic crisis in different ways. Independent cinema was a good breeding ground for exploring this theme, with one of the best touching it in a subtle but obvious way in a road movie that mixes youthful hedonism with criminal thriller. I speak clearly of ‘Spring Breakers’.
Teenage dream turned horror story
Originally presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2012, but later released in mid-March 2013 both in the United States and in countries such as Spain, the most cult work by Harmony Korine celebrates its tenth anniversary since its premiere. An anniversary that is the perfect excuse to recover it in streaming through the Amazon Prime Video platform.
The film follows a group of young students who want to join the spring festivities in Florida, where all the university students go to Chase the manna in the form of a riotous and wet party (we let the reader imagine what humidity is referred to). Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and even Korine’s wife play this desperate group that makes the decision to carry out a robbery with which to get the money with which to throw the father party.
Once they arrive, they soon find themselves in trouble, having to be helped by a disturbing but magnetic arms and drug dealer played by James Franco (probably more in his place than ever). All this makes up the skeleton of a crime film that is the Trojan horse with which the director tricks us and then gets us into trouble. a completely sensory film.
‘Spring Breakers’: taking advantage to fly free
The beautiful photograph of Benoit Debie it sustains an explosion of neon lights and confusing sensations that Korine exploits from the parameters of independent cinema. She could have gone for a more conventional, fast-paced approach that would captivate the average viewer, but restraints like that have never been that style. Luckily, having studios like A24 and Annapurna supporting creative freedom gives wings. necessary for your creation to fly.
That is why ‘Spring Breakers’ becomes a sensational movie. Not only because of how he dismantles something as American as uncontrolled university vacations to point out deeper problems in the United States as a society, but also because of how he uses the abstract to get us into that existential and emotional maelstrom that these characters live. He is capable of expressing without enunciating the forced awakening for a group of young people who only wanted the party of their lives and ended up in a nightmare. The gloomy reverse of “A teenage dream’s so hard to beat” that The Undertones sang in 1978.
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