This week, Netflix added a fantastic but highly underrated movie from 2013 that is just as relevant as ever.
Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring is a darkly comic crime film based on a real-life criminal group known as the “Bling Ring.”
The movie features Emma Watson, Taissa Farmiga, Leslie Mann and Paris Hilton.
Misunderstood and overlooked at the time, The Bling Ring is a sharper satire on celebrity culture than critics at the time would give it credit for.
Watch With Us breaks down why it’s well worth your time, and why you need to stream it this week.
The Bling Ring follows a group of privileged, fame-obsessed LA teens, including Marc (Israel Broussard), Rebecca (Katie Chang), Nicki (Emma Watson) and Sam (Taissa Farmiga), who begin burglarizing the homes of celebrities together, stealing their jewelry, clothes, cash and other valuables. Using the internet, the group is able to track celebrities’ whereabouts and approximate when they won’t be home, allowing them to slip in and out with arms full of stolen possessions, which they then frequently resell.
The film is inspired by the real-life Bling Ring as chronicled in a 2010 Vanity Fair article titled “The Suspects Wore Louboutins” by Nancy Jo Sales. Each character is based on a real person: Nick Prugo, Rachel Lee, Tess Taylor, Alexis Neiers and others. The real Bling Ring robbed the homes of several celebrities over the span of one year, between 2008 and 2009, and their victims included Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, Orlando Bloom, Megan Fox and Lindsay Lohan. In the end, the thieves had made away with assets totaling roughly $3 million, though they were ultimately caught and all received various sentences.
It’s a Prescient Satire of Internet Celebrity Culture
At the time, critics felt that Sofia Coppola took too morally ambiguous a route in her depiction of the Bling Ring, not doing enough to outwardly condemn the actions of the characters in her film. Years later, however, more astute and media-literate viewers keenly understand the sharp satire of the movie. It even ends on a note that couldn’t be more of a condemnation if it tried: on a talk show, 30 days after her release from jail, Nicki recounts being in the same correctional facility that housed Lohan at the same time, then faces the camera and cheerily promotes her own website.
But even before this moment, the movie does an excellent job at depicting the increasingly flimsy barrier between fans and celebrities during a time when social media was still in its infancy. The mythos of celebrity has now been destroyed by apps like TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram, with fans having an unprecedented level of access to the inner lives of famous people. Thus, Coppola does something subversive in her film — she sympathizes with the perpetrators of the crimes depicted and places subtle blame on the encroaching systems in place, which foster a perceived right to cross boundaries.
Emma Watson has had some difficulty trying to establish a confident acting career separate from her childhood fame in the Harry Potter franchise, and has seen mixed results in movies like Little Women, Beauty and the Beast and Noah. However, she delivers the clear high-point of her filmography as Nicki Moore (AKA Neiers) in The Bling Ring, and critics were right to single her out as the best performance in the movie.
Watson’s performance transcends any perceptions at the time that hers was only stunt casting, playing against the goody-two-shoes type she had cultivated for years playing Hermione Granger. Indeed, Watson goes from brainy to brainless in embodying Nicki, but she thoroughly proves her range playing the party girl and celebrity wannabe, evoking dead-eyed, LA-girl narcissism as if she were born into it. Watson turns lines like “Your butt looks awesome” and “I wanna rob” into comedic, meme-worthy gold, delivering them with a canny earnestness that is both cringey and delightful.
Stream The Bling Ring on Netflix.
