So I saw The Bling Ring today, which is kind of cool because I just found out it only came out in NYC and LA this weekend, and it comes out everywhere else next weekend. If you’ve been too wrapped up in Man of Steel, Ironman 3, and Star Trek, you probably haven’t noticed these little indie treasures slipping into the box office and making quiet splashes of viewing pleasure. The Bling Ring is definitely one of them. Sofia Coppola, the Oscar winning director behind Lost In Translation (2003) and Marie Antoinette (2006), has made a film based on the true story of the Hollywood Hills Burglar Bunch, a group of teens who stole $3 million worth of belongings from celebrities from 2008-2009.
If there is ever a more interesting true story that captures our generation’s obsession with pop culture more perfectly, I’d love to hear about it. Because this movie is a fun, exciting look at a group of teenagers committing crimes that only our generation could commit. They follow celebrity gossip to see which celebrities are out of town, google their addresses, study the Google Map Street View, and then head to the house to break in. And what can I say? It’s just very entertaining to watch these kids devolve into the obsessed fame whores that they really are.
The story is told basically in flashback, as some of the teens recount their experiences to court judges, psychiatrists, and magazine interviewers. Sofia Coppola said she found out about the story from a 2010 Vanity Fair article, which chronicled the kids’ adventures, entitled “The Suspect Wore Louboutins.” The main story follows Marc, a gay kid starting at a new school who meets his first friend, Rebecca. He gets wrapped up in her obsessive kleptomaniac lifestyle, and before long the two of them are breaking into the houses of Paris Hilton and Audrina Patridge. Rebecca invites three of her friends into their circle of crime, one played by Emma Watson, and another played by American Horror Story’s Taissa Farmiga. The five of them steal from Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, Rachel Bilson, Orlando Bloom, and Lindsay Lohan, until they are finally caught by the police.
And to Emma Watson’s credit, I honestly believe she carried the film. Her American accent in Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) wasn’t fantastic, but she captured this southern Californian valley girl voice really well, and her superficiality in the face of all of this crime really lifted the movie out of just seeming like a dumb, glossy biopic of these kids’ crimes.
Apparently, to get in character, she watched a lot of The Hills and Keeping Up With The Kardashians. What I found so interesting about this group is that they idolized not actors, but lifestyle icons. They quickly become engrossed in the club lifestyle of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, the ring-leader Rebecca’s biggest idols. All of the girls’ rooms have collages of these kinds of pop culture icons on the walls, and there’s a strange fascination they all have with the celebrities that do nothing but act as symbols for opulence and excess.
A lot of Sofia Coppola’s detractors complain that her movies look like stylized, pretty music videos with no substance. But in this movie, that sort of tone is perfect for what she is trying to show. These girls have almost no depth, they seek notoriety and they achieve it, no matter what the costs. Most of them actually look excited to be in the spotlight once they are caught, especially Emma’s character, Nicki. My favorite scene in the film is when Nicki is being interviewed for the famous Vanity Fair feature, and she plays the victim and talks about how she wasn’t actually involved in the crimes. And to her credit, the real life character she is based on was said to have been very drunk or high on cocaine during most of the robberies.
Another interesting point the film makes is how much the parents play a factor in these kids’ aggressive reach for material wealth. Nicki’s mother, played by Leslie Mann, is a spiritual but misguided homeschool teacher who uses Angelina Jolie as an example of perfect values and ideal behavior. She pushes Nicki, who wants to start a career in the fashion world. In fact, all of the characters talk about how they want their “own lines” some day. They want people to emulate THEIR style, and they project themselves onto people like Audrina Patridge and Paris Hilton. And the only voice of reason throughout the film seems to be Marc, who realizes too late that he had befriended a psychotic, celebrity-obsessed girl bent on achieving that lifestyle. At one point, a security tape of them stealing from Audrina Patridge ends up TMZ, and he urges the girls to stop, but they refuse.
Also, another great part about the film is that Paris Hilton is actually in it. She is shown at the same club they go to, and the scenes where they steal from her are actually filmed at her house. You see the rooms full of jewelry, the private club with an actual stripper pole, and the entire wing of the house just filled with designer clothes. It makes the movie very real, and definitely explains why it took Paris five robberies to even figure out it was happening.
I’m not sure if it’s my personal obsession with pop culture, or my sense that the film had captured a certain dark side of our generation so poignantly, but the film really stood out to me. My only wish is that it had been longer, because when we meet Rebecca, she’s already stealing from cars for the fun of it, and we know absolutely nothing about her family life. Maybe that’s the point though, that Sofia Coppola wants us to believe that anyone can be swept up by the allure of the celebrity lifestyle, and driven to absolute insanity. Regardless, I commend both Sofia Coppola and Emma Watson on this great film.
