Cannes reception bodes well for June release 'Bling Ring'

The Cannes crowd reportedly gave a chilly reception to The Great Gatsby, but early reviews for Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring have been more positive. It's worth noting that these reactions come from the very same crowd that booed her 2004 effort, Marie Antoinette. The A24 Films release comes out in the U.S. on June 14, and I think it could do big business, drawing in young crowds who think they're getting another Mean Girls along with cinephiles interested in Coppola's latest.

Variety and THR came in with opposite reactions, though both had positive things to say. THR called the work "beautifully shot but light on social commentary," while Variety opined that "when future generations want to understand how we lived at the dawn of the plugged-in, privacy-free, Paris Hilton-ized 21st century, there will likely be few films more instructive than The Bling Ring." THR appears to be in the minority with this view, but it's interesting that one critic argues there is no larger statement, while the other thinks the work is emblematic of a generation.

Coppola based her screenplay on an article in Vanity Fair about the real-life Bling Ring, a group of kids who decided to rob celebrities of their clothes and Birkin bags. They hit Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, and Megan Fox before they were finally caught on surveillance cameras and stood trial. Emma Watson leads a cast of unknowns who play the rest of the five-fingered discount crew, and Leslie Mann plays the goofy, hippie mom who homeschools Watson and her best friend and adopted sister (Taissa Farmiga, who is the younger sister, by 21 years, of actress Vera Farmiga). Coppola has always been fascinated by celebrity, but she usually focuses on the ennui of the already famous. This time, she focuses on the wannabes. Growing up just outside the world of the rich and famous, they have a sense of entitlement about their actions. Coppola wisely doesn't mock them within the film, leading to a "intriguingly intuitive and atmospheric movie," according to the Guardian.

A24 is the same distributor that released Spring Breakers, and their trio of releases so far have focused on youth, transgression, and celebrity, to varying degrees. In an roundup, The New York Times' A.O. Scott grouped together Spring Breakers, The Great Gatsby, and The Bling Ring, calling them "fables of acquisition" that speak to the current articulation of the American Dream. If Bling Ring indeed hits a cultural sweet spot, it's possible the movie could catch on beyond the "target hipster demo" predicted by Variety.