When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.<\/i><\/p>\n Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n If you search \u201cBling Ring\u201d on Netflix, one of the top results is 2022\u2019s \u201cThe Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist,\u201d a familiar-looking docuseries that fits in alongside dozens of other Netflix true-crime documentaries. That makes sense for the story of a group of Southern California teenagers who committed shockingly brazen robberies of various celebrity homes in 2008 and 2009, and if you watch the series, you\u2019ll learn about the facts of the case and the personalities involved.<\/p>\n But I\u2019d suggest looking past that obvious result to Sofia Coppola\u2019s brilliant 2013 film \u201cThe Bling Ring,\u201d which is also available on Netflix as of this month, and applies sophisticated artistry to the kind of trashy real-life story that usually doesn\u2019t get such elegant consideration.<\/p>\n Coppola\u2019s film, which is based on a 2010 Vanity Fair article about the robberies, includes many of the same details as the docu-series (or other depictions of the case), but it\u2019s also a slyly satirical take on the nature of celebrity in the age of reality TV and social media. Coppola takes the woozy vibes and sensitive portrayal of troubled teenage girls from her 1999 debut film \u201cThe Virgin Suicides\u201d and applies them to the entitled, deluded members of the so-called Bling Ring. The result may be my favorite Coppola film, and certainly her most underrated.<\/p>\n Coppola sets the tone from the opening line, as teenage ringleader Rebecca Ahn (Katie Chang) gleefully exclaims, \u201cLet\u2019s go shopping!\u201d after she and her friends have broken into their latest celebrity house. The montage that follows is virtually indistinguishable from a typical movie montage featuring characters on an upscale shopping spree, except this spree takes place inside a very rich person\u2019s closet. Coppola immediately conflates ever-present American consumerism with the characters\u2019 casual criminal behavior.<\/p>\n Chang plays Rebecca as a sort of cheerful sociopath who has no qualms about committing major burglaries and manipulates her best friend, Marc Hall (Israel Broussard), into helping her. The affable but insecure Marc is the closest that \u201cThe Bling Ring\u201d has to a sympathetic character, with his desperate need to fit in and his honest but ineffectual objections to the group\u2019s increasingly bold and dangerous activities. He\u2019s still just as superficial and status-obsessed as his friends, though, reveling in the designer fashions that they pick up from the homes of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom or buy with stolen cash.<\/p>\n Coppola beautifully depicts the allure of that gaudy, hedonistic lifestyle, drenching the soundtrack in pop hits from the period and shooting the friends\u2019 nights out in trendy clubs like music videos about existential dread.<\/p>\n Emma Watson and Taissa Farmiga play best friends and pseudo-sisters Nicki and Sam Moore, whose all-consuming desire for fame drives everything that they do, and Coppola frames them with all the tacky glamour of the reality stars they wish they could be.<\/p>\n Forget the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d movies or \u201cLittle Women\u201d \u2014 the best performance of Emma Watson\u2019s career is her majestically vapid take on Nicki Moore, who completely buys into her own grandiose self-image. Her proclamations to the press about her supposed future as a leader and healer are hilariously clueless. Watson manages to deliver a simple line like \u201cYour butt looks awesome\u201d with such a stunning mix of contempt and envy that it encapsulates everything horrifying and fascinating about her character.<\/p>\n Leslie Mann offers a perfect counterpoint as Nicki\u2019s equally narcissistic mother, a former model and supposed self-help guru who \u201chomeschools\u201d her daughters with lessons from pop-psychology bestseller \u201cThe Secret.\u201d She\u2019s like the real-world version of Amy Poehler\u2019s \u201ccool mom\u201d from \u201cMean Girls,\u201d creating the environment for her daughters to assume that the world owes them everything and that they should never take any responsibility.<\/p>\n Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n Chang, Broussard and Claire Julien (as the group member with criminal contacts) were all newcomers at the time, and their relative unfamiliarity continues to be an asset, giving the characters an anonymous quality that helps sell them as middle-class strivers.<\/p>\n Even the comparative paltriness of the celebrities that the group targets bolsters the movie\u2019s sense of the emptiness of their pursuits. Stars like Hilton and Bloom are still pretty famous, but not many people remember \u201cThe Hills\u201d star Audrina Patridge or Bloom\u2019s ex-wife Miranda Kerr anymore, which makes the group\u2019s obsession with them all the more pathetic.<\/p>\n Enough time has passed that \u201cThe Bling Ring\u201d now functions as a mesmerizing time capsule of the fashions, music and pop culture of the late \u201900s, as well as the nascent fixation on social media, which here is primarily about Facebook. Coppola mixes all of these elements together seamlessly, incorporating actual footage from sources like TMZ and even shooting in Hilton\u2019s real house, which adds to the movie\u2019s flair for the uncanny.<\/p>\n The glossy images may seem too slick at times, but Coppola knows exactly how to deploy them. In a jaw-dropping sequence, she films the group\u2019s robbery of Patridge\u2019s home in a single unbroken shot from afar, framing the house, with its massive uncovered floor-to-ceiling windows, like a diorama, with the tiny figures of Rebecca and Marc scurrying about. It\u2019s both gorgeous and clinical, in a movie full of similarly striking observations.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
\u2018The Bling Ring\u2019 has impeccable vibes<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Bling Ring\u2019 features pitch-perfect performances<\/h2>\n
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\u2018The Bling Ring\u2019 continues to resonate<\/h2>\n