'Bling Ring' turns tables on audience

There are directors and writers who perpetuate traditional methods of filmmaking and garner loads of acclaim for their work, and then there are directors and writers who challenge the conventions of the medium to polarizing and diverse results. Sofia Coppola represents the latter.

Coppola, the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, is a descendent of classic filmmaking herself. Nevertheless, she has garnered plenty of success on her own merits. She won an Academy Award for writing “Lost in Translation” and is one of a handful of women nominated in the Best Director category.

In her recent films she deftly explored themes of celebrity, excess and indulgence to dizzying heights of achievement.

Her latest, ripped from the headlines and sugarcoated “The Bling Ring,” continues in that vein of exploration.

Based on true events, the film fictionalizes a group of privileged and unsupervised Calabasas, Calif., teenagers who break into celebrity homes, play dress-up and steal $3 million in valuables.

Coppola, ever a fan of over-elaborately staged and elongated tracking shots, lets her young cast roam free. They trapeze through Paris Hilton’s home, trying on her clothes and jewels and even swing around her stripper pole a few times. There’s a palpably sexy atmosphere created in order to lure the audience into the teen’s world. How can things be so wrong while Emma Watson flips those perfectly coiffed extensions?

Speaking of Watson, the girl is dynamite. It’s difficult to recall the last time vapid was played with such intellect that it never veers into brainless. But she’s merely the most famous face to point out in a knockout cast, led deceptively by Katie Chang as ringleader Rebecca and Israel Broussard’s Marc, her mildly unaware right-hand man. Broussard is the film’s true breakout star, giving understanding to a lost boy desperately seeking something to belong to.

But the film’s most astonishing accomplishment arises in the almost sleight of hand approach to reprimanding the audience for indulging in these teen’s illegal activities. Throughout the ring’s countless burglaries, we’re left to goggle at the diamonds, designer labels and Rolex watches. We want let into the celebrity lifestyle as much as the Bling Ring does.

It’s no spoiler to say the ring must ultimately face its demise. Coppola whips a mirror right out at the audience, pointing out our condoning of such entertaining wickedness. After all, it’s we the consumers who drive pop culture and created the notion that a group of bored teens might have to settle for being infamous rather than being famous.