In a brilliant stroke of counterintuitive casting, the teen idol Selina Gomez has been given a part in Harmony Korine’s next film, “Spring Breakers.” The thought of Gomez — the witchy but squeaky clean star of the Disney Channel’s “The Wizards of Waverly Place” — working for a director dedicated to subversion and degradation is tantalizing to say the least.
What will her boyfriend, Justin Bieber, think?
“Spring Breakers” depicts the misadventures of a group of college girls who rob a restaurant to pay for a spring break vacation but land in jail. They are bailed out by a drug and arms dealer, which is where their troubles really begin.
“It’s a different character than I have ever played before,” 19-year-old Gomez told MTV. “It’s a different kind of vibe I think than people are used to seeing me in. What you’re going to see is more raw, I think. It’s going to be raw and more about acting.”
The fact that James Franco, Emma Roberts, and Vanessa Hudgens have also been cast in the film raises the possibility that Korine is going mainstream. It’s hard to imagine, however, that the writer of “Kids” (1995) and writer-director of “Gummo” (1997), “Julien Donkey-Boy” (1999), “Mister Lonely” (2007), and “Trash Humpers” (2009) would willingly abandon his brand of semi-avant-garde provocation.
After surviving her debut in “Barney & Friends” at age seven, Gomez had small TV and film parts and appeared on “Hannah Montana.” In 2007, she began her long run in the massively successful “Wizards,” which will complete its fourth and final season with an hour-long finale on January 6.
Korine may have been partly intrigued by Gomez because her character on “Wizards” is much spikier than most TV heroines for tweens. Alex Russo, like her brothers a wizard-in-training growing up in an Italian-Mexican Greenwich Village family, is a lazy, sneaky high-school student who’s not so much sassy as mercilessly sardonic—and sometimes disagreeably so. Though essentially good-natured, she frequently gets her comeuppance as her magic schemes go awry.
Branching into features, she starred in the innocuous family films “Ramona and Beezus” (2010) and “Monte Carlo” (2011). She has also built an impressive pop career singing with her band Selena Gomez & the Scene, which has cut two gold albums and two platinum singles.
There’s no telling what Korine will ask her and her co-stars to do. “Gummo” depicts (or alludes to) cat-torture, glue-sniffing, the pimping of a girl with Down syndrome, child molestation, and teen sex. “Julien Donkey-Boy” focuses on a schizophrenic who may have impregnated his sister — and she tragically goes ice-skating when close to term. “Trash Humpers” is about three masked anti-social geriatrics who have sex with stuffed garbage bags. Calculated to offend while following their own surreal logic, Korine’s films are invariably funny black comedies that use free expression to plunge the depths of bad taste and question the viewer’s complicity.
Too bad the chances are that Gomez’s legions of young fans won’t be flocking to see what will be her most interesting movie yet.