Laurence Phelan reviews The Bling Ring (15)
Film of the week: Sofia's thrill-seekers aim for the stars
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Your support makes all the difference.Like some sort of unauthorised MTV Cribs, Sofia Coppola's deadpan comedy breaks us into the homes of LA's rich and famous – Paris Hilton, Rachel Bilson, Orlando Bloom, Megan Fox and Lindsay Lohan – in the company of the titular gang of vapid, celebrity-obsessed teenaged burglars and thrill-seekers. It is based on a real case, and celeb-literate viewers will be able to date it by the references to Demi and Ashton's Oscars party, and Lindsay Lohan's DUI convictions. But it is suffused with the same gauzy, dreamlike quality that is characteristic of all the director's work.
Here, she uses it to conjure the peculiar, consequence-free atmosphere in which these rich kids live, locked into a narcissistic gaze with their own Facebook pages; hypnotised by celebrity, and their sense of their own entitlement. In the film's funniest detail, the character Emma Watson plays is home-schooled by her mother (Leslie Mann), with a curriculum drawn entirely from the 2006 self-help book The Secret. In the film's second funniest detail, Paris Hilton's mansion (and she opened up the real thing to the film-makers) is decorated with mirrors and framed magazine covers adorned by her own face.
Starring Katie Chang, Emma Watson, 90mins
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