The Bling Ring Review: Stranger than Virgin Suicides

I went into The Bling Ring with minimal expectations. I love Sofia Coppola and her awesome films about youth girls, but I saw the reviews and it was teetering on 60% on RT. yet, after seeing it, I have to say it is one of the stranger cinematic experiences I’ve seen.

The Bling Ring stars a bunch of nobodies and Emma Watson as 5 celebrity and fashion obsessed teens who go on a spree of thefts on celebrity houses. It also starts Leslie Mann, from Knocked Up and This is 40 fame, playing Watson’s (I think) Scientologist mother.

What was so strange about this film was It just seemed to defy all narrative conventions. The characters seemed mostly one dimensional, and weren’t rally developed, with the exception of Marc. I swear half the film was the ring in the celebrity houses trying on clothes. It got a bit tiresome after a while because there didn’t seem to be any difference with the scenes. Maybe the got progressively less careful and more cocky, but it seemed a bit excessive. I saw those scenes as more of some sort of statement on the nature of this culture, but that is basically what the film was about entirely.

Emma Watson’s character, Nikki, was the biggest bitch but was still one of the most prominent cast members that we had to like. I think if Nikki was played by a random we would hate her, but since we’ve basically grown up with Watson in our lives, we can see her as being stupidly likeable.

There were some really good shots in there. One that stood out in particular was one of a beautiful modern house on the Hollywood hills being robbed by the ring. The art style seemed to be designed to with fashion colours in mind. The colours of the house interiors looked like a designer dress or heels. See that’s what I mean by strange.

SPOILERS: the characters slowly became more and more like their celebrity idols, for example, they keep making comments about how Lindsey got a DUI or someone else got one, then about half way through the film one of the girls gets a DUI. I kind of likes that almost expected foreshadowing. It wasn’t too deep but still worthy.

This is a hard film to review because of its narrative. I think Coppola made a really strange film but I did enjoy it and I would give it three stars.

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