Sofia Coppola has mastered indifference. In Somewhere, her protagonist, actor Johnny Marco (played by Stephen Dorff), falls asleep as twins perform a choreographed pole dance in his room at the Chateau Marmont. In Lost in Translation, an aging actor (Bill Murray) vacantly slogs his way through a whisky commercial he’s filming in Tokyo. In both cases, Coppola’s characters ultimately move past the emptiness and start to feel alive again. Not so in her latest motion picture, The Bling Ring.

The Calabasas teenagers whose obsession with themselves and the celebrities they burglarize in this new film based on Nancy Jo Sales’ Vanity Fair article “The Suspects Wore Louboutins” have no such redeeming qualities. Emma Watson—playing Nicki, an Ugg wearing, platitude-spewing thief—gives a particularly brilliant portrayal of the dead-eyed vacuous navel-gazing youth culture spawned by TMZ and its ilk. And the sets (including Paris Hilton’s house with its gallery of headshots depicting the heiress) piled with quilted bags, rhinestone necklaces and Rolex watches implicate anyone with a penchant for luxury goods, a Facebook account and a webcam. There’s a minute-long scene where Marc (another teenage thief played by Israel Broussard) dances in front of his computer simultaneously watching himself and imagining others watching him that’s particularly haunting. Even as he boards a prison bus wearing an orange jumpsuit, Marc’s face registers no emotion.

To say that the film is sobering is an understatement. Guests at the film’s L.A. premiere held at the Director’s Guild of America on Tuesday, June 4 and hosted by Vanity Fair, A24 and Louis Vuitton (the French fashion house helmed by artistic director Marc Jacobs, a longtime friend of Coppola) left the screening room in an introspective haze as they headed for the afterparty at the Chateau Marmont. But a silent elevator ride down to the Guild’s parking garage was broken by a random conversation about a new cleanse, and then all the trappings of L.A. snapped back into place. Regardless, Coppola’s sobering film made the audience take a much-needed look at youth culture. Even if you’ve clothed yourself in indifference, it’s not a pretty picture. Though you have to admit, the cast looked great in Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Balmain, and Dior.

By Elizabeth Varnell

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