Sofia Coppola's "Bling Ring" Delves Into Celebrity Obsession Perhaps, by way of illustrating the deeply surreal, snake-eating-its-own-tail nature of Sofia Coppola's new film, "The Bling Ring," it's best to start with a simple exchange between reporter and director. The movie tells the story of a real-life gang of reality-television-addled teenagers who, one burgled celebrity residence at a time, became a criminal organization responsible for the theft of millions of dollars worth of designer dresses, expensive watches and, almost, Paris Hilton's tiny dog. The story seemed a natural fit for Ms. Coppola: few directors of this era have been more at ease amid the outlandish, brightly colored wilds of youth culture. And the celebrity-obsessed Los Angeles of "The Bling Ring" was a world that Ms. Coppola, the daughter of the director Francis Ford Coppola and a consummate insider in her own right, knew particularly well. That was the conceit a reporter tried to advance in a quiet West Village cafe anyway, as Ms. Coppola, newly returned from Cannes, where "Bling Ring" met with mostly positive reviews, shrugged off the notion that she had anything in common with the flashbulb-popping, swag-hoarding vision of Hollywood that she depicts in her new film. She circled the issue a while before asserting, "I'm not part of that world." "I think people think I grew up around that or something," she added. To me, Al Pacino and Paris Hilton are different, you know what I mean? Still, "The Bling Ring," based on a 2010 Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales, is a movie that abounds in rich confluences, some intended, others inadvertent. Reality and fiction rub until they generate sparks. The characters in the film hunger for luxury brands, some of which, like Louis Vuitton or Marc Jacobs, Ms. Coppola has designed or modeled for. And the fame and easy fortune that the real-life burglars envied and craved has, to some extent, become theirs - two of the members of the so-called Bling Ring, Alexis Neiers and Nick Prugo, were consultants on the film, which in turn immortalizes their criminal exploits (albeit under other names). The cast includes Emma Watson as Nicki, an aspiring model and actress who sports an aggressive valley girl accent and who, when caught, blithely expresses a desire to "lead a huge charity organization." The actress faced a kind of paradox in crafting her character: Nicki, in real life, could've easily been obsessed with Ms. Watson, a star of the "Harry Potter" franchise and the most recognizably famous actress to appear in "The Bling Ring." "It was really, really weird," Ms. Watson said. And that was the other difficulty that I had in promoting this movie. I feel like journalists have been setting me up or inviting me to criticize consumerism, celebrity culture, social media, fame and fashion. But ironically I, in my own way, I am part of all of that. And so that's weird for me too, and has its own irony. Then there was one of the detectives on the real-life case, Brett Goodkin, who was a consultant - and, briefly, actor - for the film. He is now the subject of a Los Angeles Police Department internal affairs probe, accused of compromising his own investigation. "I didn't realize that we were jeopardizing the case by talking to him, but I was glad to talk to anyone I could who was involved," Ms. Coppola said, carefully. Though Ms. Neiers, whom Ms. Watson's Nicki is closely modeled after, was involved, she nevertheless called a trailer for the film "trashy and inaccurate" on Twitter in April, and accused Mr. Goodkin and Ms. Sales of being "everything they accused us of being. Celebrity status obsessed, fame & money hungry. Ms. Neiers did not respond to a request for comment; Mr. Prugo declared himself "willing to give an interview," then reversed himself and declined to comment further. Ms. Sales recently expanded her original article into a book, "The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World" (It Books/HarperCollins) and she also serves as the basis for a minor character in the film, a journalist to whom various characters relate their hopes, dreams or crimes. In an interview, Ms. Sales, known for her celebrity and youth-culture journalism - she wrote one of the first national magazine features on Ms. Hilton, nearly 13 years ago - said that Ms. Coppola struck her as the ideal director for the story. "The themes in her work, I feel so familiar with," Ms. Sales said, "privileged kids and their obsession with fame and this kind of materialism."