Even though it seems forgotten in a decade full of A24-produced gems, The Bling Ring is one of the most entertaining and rewatchable movies put out since it kicked off the company’s incredible decade in 2013. It runs with the DNA of cocaine-fueled gangster movies while bringing the beauty and glamour that has become signature to Sofia Coppola’s style, and it presents us with a type of crime movie that seems to be completely of its own impossible-to-understand world. Every frame is full of the corruption and excess that defines the best of the genre. The film is a marvel of pulpy entertainment with the artistic ambition to back it up, and the movie rarely gets the credit for how truly great it is.

From the moment the opening credits roll, the movie drips with artifice. After showing security camera footage of the Bling Ring – a group of affluent teenagers who robbed celebrity houses in the Hollywood Hills in 2008 and 2009 – breaking into a house, the title of the movie flashes in bright yellow letters and the twanging guitar riff of Sleigh Bells’ “The Crown on the Ground” kicks in. It’s an opening sequence that evokes the lavish pop rock sequence that kicks off Sofia Coppola’s other biopic, Marie Antionette, but this time Coppola is much more interested in examining the unreality of the lives of her characters. The typical inquisitiveness that Coppola brought to many of her other characters is gone, replaced with a more black-and-white examination of a lifestyle and culture that feels so different from the rest of the world.

As the rock song glamorizes the designer clothes and jewelry flashing across the screen, we get a quick introduction to the characters of the story through manufactured public images. Social media posts of the Bling Ring members and videos of the victims of the robberies posing for photographers on the red carpet are cut between shots of neatly arranged shoes and designer bags, keeping us acutely aware of the facade of life in the spotlight.

The Bling Ring is constantly influenced by this idea of chasing an idealized Hollywood glamour. It never lets us forget how outside perception shapes its character and their motivations, and the characters in the Bling Ring are constantly bound by their narcissism and self-serving ambitions. Everyone is obsessed with not just looking amazing, but looking like one of the stars living in the Hollywood Hills mansions that the kids were robbing. Coppola – born into Hollywood royalty – is in the interesting position to comment on these characters with a unique perspective. She seems cognizant of this fact and as the words “written and directed by Sofia Coppola” flash across the screen a piece of jewelry with the words “RICH BITCH” lies in the middle.

Her unique point of view is one that easily could have been clouded by her own experiences and privilege. Or perhaps, more accurately, it’s a perspective that could have been clouded if not for Coppola’s narrative detachment from the main characters of the film. It’s an adaptation of the incredibly-named Vanity Fair article “The Suspects Wore Louboutins” by Nancy Jo Sales, and the most memorable dialogue and scenes from the film are taken directly from the characters’ quotes in the article. Coppola’s biases or her imprint on the characters is rarely felt through their dialogue, and even the dialogue that is created by Coppola feels exactly in place with the what we know about real life figures the film is emulating. But what we know about the characters can only be gleaned from their own descriptions of each other and their biased recollections of the events, which adds another layer of falsity to the story.

Most memorably, Emma Watson’s character Nicki – who’s based off of real life Bling Ring member Alexis Neirs – ends the film with a monologue that came from a real life denial statement that Neirs gave her lawyer. Watson puts on a thick, plastic L.A accent that drips with insincerity as she talks about her faux spirituality and her supposed remorse. “I am a firm believer in Karma, and I think this situation was attracted into my life as a huge learning lesson for me to grow and expand as a spiritual human being,” Nicki says, assuring a reporter through word-for-word transcription that “I want to lead a huge charity organization. I want to lead a country for all I know.” Coppola doesn’t try to humanize the characters as much as she simply instructs the audience to watch this bizarre display of human nature play out in the heart of American excess.

She even spends a lot of time nailing the camera to the ground and letting long takes observe the characters and their conceit. We see characters staring into mirrors and trying on clothes in houses that aren’t theirs. They compliment each other’s outfits while getting ready to go out and bask in the shadow of famous Hollywood stars once they’re at the clubs. The glamour of Hollywood and its stars is seductive enough to make it clear why these already affluent teenagers worshipped the lifestyle and constantly chased for more, but it never sympathizes with them.

It’s this style of storytelling and removal from the protagonists of the story that makes The Bling Ring so much more interesting to me in retrospect. It’s an adaptation of a story where nobody’s motivations really make too much sense and everyone’s idea of truth is clouded by jealousy or self-preservation, and it embraces that in it’s storytelling rather than working around it. Coppola is not really interested in getting behind the truth. Instead, The Bling Ring embraces the unknowable and draws attention to the fact that nobody in it’s world is entirely trustworthy.

Coppola’s stylized late 00’s Hollywood world lives in the shadow of a post-TMZ and post-internet world. But even in a world of more “access” than ever into the lives of Hollywood stars, any sort of truth seems even more unattainable. The idea of celebrity has been so commodiffied and idealized that the members of The Bling Ring are chasing something that doesn’t even exist. From the moment we see the Bling Ring sitting in an L.A. club gazing across the room starstruck at Kirsten Dunst and Paris Hilton they are seduced by this lifestyle, and Coppola glamorizes that lifestyle’s facade perfectly. She even filmed the robbery scenes in Paris Hilton’s actual house. No amount of designer bags or stolen cash would ever be enough for the eponymous group that the LAPD described as an “organized criminal enterprise.”

The Bling Ring feels very of its time, bridging the gap between the celebrity culture of the 2000s and 2010s. But the lifestyle and characters it depicts are still perplexing and relevant, even though the world and the way that we experience celebrities and Hollywood culture has changed so much in the years since. The film shows a world wrestling with changing public image, and a generation getting used to always having the lens of a camera pointed at them. Whether it be the eye of social media, the shutters of paparazzi, or the greenish glow of the security cameras catching the kids in the act, the idea that there is some sort of wall between publicity and the truth is ever present. Coppola’s ability to capture this moment and its time while also making an entertaining joyride that holds up despite its rapidly changing subject matter is an amazing achievement.