Sofia Coppola’s latest film is not an action adventure, or a supernatural horror, or a stoner comedy, just so you know. Instead, it’s about the emptiness of the celebrity lifestyle just as her Lost in Translation was about the emptiness of the celebrity lifestyle, and Somewhere, and Marie Antoinette, in its way. Write about what you know, everyone says, and fair play to Sofia. Being ‘Hollywood Royalty’ herself, she can’t be any stranger to excess, and she has thought about it, and keeps thinking about it, and The Bling Ring is, I would say, and for what it’s worth (not much, I suspect) her best film to date. It’s taut, makes its point without hammering it home, well acted (particularly Emma Watson; I know!) and visually delicious. The Louboutins! The Birkins! The Rolexes! Sometimes I think I would like to have a go at the empty celebrity lifestyle, but then I remember I don’t have the time, and have to go get the car MOT’d or go to Sainsbury’s or something. Pity, that.
Based on true events, amazingly, The Bling Ring follows the group of high school Californian teenagers who, between 2008 and 2009, stole more than $3 million in clothes, cash and jewellery from the Hollywood homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom, among others. They actually robbed Ms Hilton five times and when I first read about this I wondered: why didn’t she increase security after the first time? And now I know. She has so much stuff she hadn’t noticed. Imagine! Really: imagine! I think the extent to which you enjoy this film may depend on the extent to which you wish to spend time with any of these people — they are neither smart nor endearing — but as a study of celebrity from the skewed viewpoint of obsession, it is nearly up there with Scorsese’s The King of Comedy.
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