Meet Emma Watson, the Bling burglar

Cannes, May 16: Audiences would normally have little sympathy for a bunch of teenagers if a film portrayed them as breaking into people’s homes and robbing them of their valuables.

But change the plot a little and make the teenagers come from middle class backgrounds and their victims the big name celebrities of the day. Add one more twist to the plot. In India, the teenagers would be sneaking into the homes of folk like Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai, Katrina Kaif, Sania Mirza and Deepika Padukone. Perhaps Mallika Sherawat’s collection, with her questionable taste, would be given a miss.One further restriction: the teenagers will be stealing only designer gear — shoes, handbags, dark glasses, clothes, jewellery and anything considered “cool” and “fashionable”.

Sofia Coppola’s comic tale, The Bling Ring — “bling” is slang for ostentatious jewellery — is set in that part of Los Angeles where Hollywood and other celebrities have their homes but it could easily be located in India or any culture where the young would give anything to be seen wearing the right brands.

The Bling Ring was the inaugural film today in the important Cannes section known as Un Certain Regard. A further reason why the film is remarkable and is most likely to do well all over the world is that one of the gang of seven is played by Emma Watson.

The world got used to her as clever witch Hermione Granger, a role she started playing at the age of nine in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), the first of the eight movies in the franchise. She has been in all of them.

Now 23, she plays Nicki, a sassy 18-year-old who is part of the bling ring. The film was inspired by real events which were described in a Vanity Fair article, “The Suspects Wore Louboutins”.

Watson made a significant point. What motivated the youngsters was not so much greed but being able to take a peek into the lives of the celebrities. That way they felt they were themselves part of the celebrity scene.

Often, after breaking in — and it was surprisingly easy to track celebrities online and discover where they lived and even what they were eating for breakfast — all the gang members would do was hold a party.

Asked whether she had finally left Hermione Granger and the Harry Potter stories behind, Watson responded: “Harry Potter seems such a long time ago. So much has happened in the last three years. I am not trying to run away from it — I am very proud of it.”

The group of teenage burglars, who were fixated on the glamorous life, stole more than $3 million in luxury goods from celebrity homes. Their victims included Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Lindsay Lohan and Rachel Bilson. The gang became known in the media as “The Bling Ring”.

To get into her role, Watson drew inspiration from reality TV icons such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of The Simple Life fame. Coppola also sent her copies of Pretty Wild, a reality TV show featuring Alexis Neiers, a member of the real Bling Ring. Coppola has spoken before about how she came to make the movie, which is likely to emerge from Cannes this year as one of its brightest offerings.

“I remember when the story was on the news a little, but didn’t pay much attention to it,” she recalled. “However, when I read the article, I though it seemed like a movie: it was unbelievable, and had young, pretty kids being bad in a glamorous world. I think their quotes really struck me: how they didn’t seem to think they had done anything that wrong, and how they were mostly interested in the fame the robberies had brought them. The whole story seemed to say so much about our times and growing up with Facebook and Twitter.”She then spoke to the author of the Vanity Fair article and read her full interview transcripts.

“I thought Emma would be great as Nicki, and I always like working with kids that are just starting, they’re full of enthusiasm and freshness,” Coppola said today., at a post screening press conference. “I loved that they were really 16 and 17 years old.”

The young stars — Watson was joined by Israel Broussard, Kate Chang and Taissa Farmiga — looked exactly in real life as they do on screen: full of fun and mischief. The gang members were all caught and given four year prison terms but were quickly released and became celebrities themselves.

The youngsters were all living in Los Angeles not far from the homes of the rich and privileged, explained Coppola.

What is extraordinary is that Paris Hilton, one of the celebrities whose home was burgled, happily collaborated with Coppola – the director showed she had one room filled with even more shoes than Imelda Marcos of the Philippines.

“Paris Hilton has a sense of humour,” smiled Sofia Coppola, who is the daughter of the legendary director, Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather fame.