The Bling Ring
Sofia Coppola
The story: The Bling Ring was the catchy name coined for a group of seven teenagers and young adults who burgled the homes of celebrities such as Paris Hilton. In the film, it starts with new student Marc Hall (Israel Broussard) falling under the spell of Rebecca Ahn (Katie Chang). From unlocked cars to his friend’s unoccupied house, they move on to target celebrities’ pads. Their friends Chloe (Claire Julien), Nicki (Emma Watson) and her adopted sister Sam (Taissa Farmiga) get drawn in as well. Based on the Vanity Fair magazine article The Suspects Wore Louboutins by Nancy Jo Sales.

In one scene, singer M.I.A.’s Bad Girls is blasting over the car stereo and the characters are belting out along: “Live fast, die young/Bad girls do it well”. It might as well as be their personal motto.
Maybe not the “die young” part, but certainly with the living fast. Rebecca and her ilk are creations of the celebrity-obsessed culture. They pore over magazines and gossip websites and draw sustenance on the neverending stream of images of the rich and the fabulous.
Add to that a sense of self-entitlement and the result is a combustible mix. They want to live like the rich and fabulous without actually doing any of the work to get there. Hey, if Paris Hilton can do it, why not them?
And so they treat the homes of the stars as their personal shopping malls, rifling through walk-in closets and raiding jewellery boxes with abandon.
Hilton, who was a real-life victim of the gang, lent her home to writer-director Sofia Coppola (Lost In Translation, 2003) to film in for that extra touch of authenticity.
Coppola also draws compelling performances from newcomers Katie Chang and Israel Broussard. You can understand why Marc falls under her spell and her strength of will. She has him completely under her thumb and she gets him to suss out where the stars live, a handy Google search away.
There is hardly any sense of wrongdoing on their part and Marc’s half-hearted protests are brusquely brushed aside by Rebecca. Besides, their friends are envious of their exploits and eventually tag along.
You also get an intimate sense of their world in the film.
The dialogue is as vacuous as the characters and peppered with “cool” and “sick” and other slick adjectives that reduce everything, and everyone, to snap judgments.
Adult supervision is largely missing or it is ineffectual, as in the case of Nicki’s mother (Leslie Mann) with her New Age-y beliefs.
For all its throbbing energy, the film sags a little in the middle. The break-ins get a little repetitive as the gang go after the lodgings of stars such as Orlando Bloom, Megan Fox and Lindsay Lohan.
Eventually, they get their comeuppance.
Rebecca tries to play innocent, Marc is remorseful and Nicki parlays her notoriety into five minutes of fame. Emma Watson was more effective in the teen drama The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012) than here, where her performance almost borders on parody.
The shift in focus from Rebecca and Marc to Nicki feels a little jarring. But it also makes sense since things come full circle with her story arc. Even if her claim to fame is dubious, Nicki is now a bona fide celebrity in her own right.
(ST)