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| A great poster for Larry Clark's Kids |
In Kids, we follow a group of very unsupervised New York kids and teens over the course of just over a day, as they indulge in the different activities that make up their lives. These activities include thieving, violence, sex, drug-taking and talking, mostly about sex.
The film takes its time in getting us into the environment, before the suspense element gets introduced: SPOILER One of the girls learns that she has gotten HIV from the only boy she has ever been with, and we then follow her despairing journey to try to find the boy and stop him from infecting another young girl. Cross-cutting between the dark and lonely place where she finds herself, and the boy's routine advances to a young teenage girl is quite effective and terrible.
It seems clear from especially the first half hour of Kids that the film finds these juveniles charming in a way; worthy of our attention, and, despite their many flaws, not deserving of an unloving movie in their name.
Different audiences will feel that different parts of Kids is transgressive: The kids disobey so many basic rules of social conduct and are provocative and crude, but also the curiosity that the film allows its audiences in lingering in sex-related conversations between its young actors that often don't have any direct connection to the plot is provocative, and some have said lascivious (and even worse things.) I did feel voyeuristic at times, watching these scenes, but, more importantly, I didn't 'get enough' or reach a state where I had gotten tired of them; (appropriately, Kids is held at a tight 91 minute playtime.) The voyeuristic quality of this look inside the lives of some kids in a major metropolis just makes the experience all the more troubling.
One can discard Kids and its characters with a swift justification that they are abominable, and certainly their behavior is very, very bad, (but, importantly, is presented unexcused by the film-makers, as especially SPOILER the shocking violent scene cements), but one must wonder and ask where the parenting generation is in their lives. And I laid most of my 'blame' for all the troubles presented in Kids at the doorsteps of these neglecting parents. In the film, we in fact only meet one parent, and she is a home-mother "without a cent to [my] name", simultaneously chain-smoking and breast-feeding her newest creation.
The details:
Kids' gritty guerrilla-style of film-making is accompanied by a great, contemporary soundtrack and four fine lead actors, who are all debuting. Especially Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry (1999)) is incredible as Jennie, and so are the two boys, Leo Fitzpatrick (Storytelling (2001)) and Justin Pierce (A Brother's Kiss (1997)), who plays Casper and very much was the kind of lost skateboarding kid of the streets that he portrays in the film. Pierce had run-ins with the law and drugs and tragically hanged himself in his hotel room in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas in 2000 at age 25.
Kids is a forceful, great debut film for all involved, although its production does raise questions: Scenes like the one in the picture below where four minors are smoking weed would be interesting to read about, but I can find no such information.
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| Are these kids actually smoking weed and getting high in Larry Clark's Kids, or how was this scene achieved? If you know, shoot a comment about it |
The film in itself doesn't glorify the troubled kids, in my opinion, but it successfully portrays the moral vacuum that they lead their random lives in, and it doesn't make many adult audiences ever want to bring up a family in New York I suppose.
It was written by a just 18 year-old Harmony Korine, who debuted as a director with Gummo (1997), and is directed by Vietnam veteran Larry Clark (Ken Park (2002)), who with Kids succeeded with one of the most controversial and strong debuts of a film director in recent American history.
Related post:
Larry Clark: Top 10: Best drug-themed movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Watch the punky trailer here
Cost: 1.5 mil. $
Box office: 20.4 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Miramax bought the worldwide distribution rights for this small, independent film for 3.5 mil. $. As the film got an NC-17-rating, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, owners of Miramax, had to buy the film back from their company due to Miramax's rule to not release NC-17-rated films, although the film was eventually released unrated in the US. Under another company name, Shining Excalibur Films, Kids went on to enjoy a warm reception both domestically (7.4 mil. $) and abroad, and the Weinsteins are said to have profited as much as 2 mil. $ each from their distribution of Kids.]
What do you think of Kids?
Any information on its making is very welcome
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