The Bling Ring: Robbing the Rich to Keep for Yourself

You’ve seen the headlines about mobs of teenagers ripping off major department stores, loading up on trendy fashions and expensive jewelry and then disappearing into the night. It’s a recent phenomenon and an ugly one, reflecting have-not kids (often in thrall to older crooks) and their willingness to create chaos because they feel cheated out of an expensive lifestyle. 

 Filmmaker Sofia Coppola explored a different kind of “bling ring” in 2013, focusing on a real-life group of upper-middle-class SoCal teens who made it into the pages of Vanity Fair after being arrested for breaking into the homes of pop culture celebs (Paris Hilton! Lindsay Lohan!) and running off with some $3 million worth of cash and belongings. Coppola’s version, which she wrote and directed, fictionalizes the actual kids but sticks close to their crimes and motives. Taking advantage of Coppola’s usual cinéma vérité stylistics, it conveys the excitement of pampered teenagers, whom Coppola herself has called "products of our growing reality TV culture,” emulating their small-screen idols by literally swiping the expensive toys with which the stars surround themselves in their natural habitat. The original Vanity Fair article, by Mary Jo Sales, was called “The Suspects Wore Louboutins,” and within Coppola’s film we see the members of the informal gang (including its one boy) happily modeling Louboutins, Rolexes, and other expensive trinkets in their own bedrooms, with their parents totally oblivious to what they’re up to.  

 Coppola’s has been an interesting career. She is, of course, the daughter of a one-time Hollywood Young Turk (and one of Roger Corman’s  early protégés),Francis Ford Coppola, who segued from 1963’s Dementia 13 to 1972’s Oscar-winning The Godfather and its sequels. When making 1990’s The Godfather, Part III, Francis Coppola found himself short an ingenue, and gave the part intended for Winona Ryder to his own daughter, who had to put up with scathing reviews of her performance. Somehow she survived that debacle, and launched her own feature-film writing and directing career with The Virgin Suicides in 1999. This grim but fascinating adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ debut novel was followed by Lost in Translation, which garnered 4 Oscar nominations, including best director. At that point in Hollywood history, no woman had ever won an Oscar for directing, and Coppola too was shut out . . . but she did take home a statuette for her very original screenplay about two Americans adrift in after-hours Tokyo. Since then, she’s directed about seven other films, including an anachronistic life of Marie Antoinette and an upcoming biopic about Priscilla Presley.

 There’s no denying her cinematic skill, nor her unique perspective on young women in positions of power. But if we’re being uncharitable we can also view her as one of Hollywood’s Nepo Babies, the children of movieland royalty for whom doors open. It’s hardly surprising that such well-endowed young people spark resentment in those who were not so auspiciously born.  Still, everyone is a bit gaga about Hollywood connections, however obscure. One of the kids in The Bling Ring, the young boy who seems less comfortable than the others in taking what doesn’t belong to him, has a dad with industry ties, perhaps one reason he is accepted as part of this Hollywood-obsessed crew. But, as The Bling Ring shows, he earns one of the harshest sentences doled out by the legal system. By way of contrast, the character played by Harry Potter’s Emma Watson (the one big name in this very young and mostly unknown cast) is terrific as Nicki, who puts on a great show of contrition and basic innocence. Now that’s acting!