“Spring Breakers” Has Bikini-Clad Debut at SXSW

The movie has been highly anticipated thanks to a widely viewed online trailer showing former Disney starlets transformed into heavily armed, lightly clad mean girls bent on having a good time at all costs.

Iconoclastic director Harmony Korine unveiled what may be one of the most twisted spring break movies in recent memory with a screening heralded by a roving motorcade of scooter drivers in bikinis and ski masks and lasting into the wee hours Monday at the South by Southwest film festival.

"Spring Breakers," positioned as both a celebration and an indictment of the annual bacchanal, follows four bikini-clad college students through a series of improbable adventures. After financing their excursion to the Florida coast with a robbery, the young women descend farther into the criminal underworld than intended.

The movie has been highly anticipated thanks to a widely viewed online trailer showing former Disney starlets transformed into heavily armed, lightly clad mean girls bent on having a good time at all costs.

As the venue for a domestic premier, the promoters chose South by Southwest, held in the college town of Austin.

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Asked whether the whole affair should be read as satire, Korine said, "I more want you to have a physical experience."

And the movie?

"It does have its cake and eat it too," said James Franco, the wide-ranging actor best known as a villain in the Spider-Man series and starring as a cornrow-headed thug in "Spring Breakers."

The film also features Selena Gomez, the 20-year-old pop music singer known as Justin Bieber's ex-girlfriend and for her role on Disney's now defunct "Wizards of Waverly Place."

When the lights went down, Korine's fever dream of gunplay, body shots and girls gone wild found a receptive audience.

In a Q-and-A session, an audience member asked Korine about the open-ended final scene.

"I end it there because I want you to dream on it," he said, adding, "Why do you want to be told everything all the time?"

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