Kids (1995)
Directed by Larry Clark, screenplay by Harmony Korine
This is an important, influential and controversial film on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.
Let's start with director Larry Clark, whose first feature this was. He was already relatively well-known as a photographer of street kids and skaters in American cities. At some point, he decided to make a film of his favourite subjects and hired then 21-year-old Harmony Korine to write the screenplay, based on a storyline he came up with.
That storyline involves a teenage boy who is obsessed with sex (what teenage boy isn't?) and who gets a kick out of "deflowering" virgin girls. He sees this as "safe sex" and doesn't think it necessary to use condoms. What he doesn't know is that he is infected with HIV and is spreading the disease to all the young girls he is taking advantage of.
Korine and Clark went to the streets to find the non-professional cast of the film. They encouraged the kids to act naturally, to improvise and to speak like they usually do. Add to that crude documentary camera work, and the result is a remarkably and often disturbingly realistic portrayal of American teenage urban culture.
The film not only launched the careers of Larry Clark (who went on to direct Another Day in Paradise and, more recently, Bully) and Harmony Korine (who took up directing on his own, with the highly experimental and controversial films Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy), but also introduced youths to the world of acting (most notably Chloe Sevigny and Leo Fitzpatrick). Furthermore, it is part of a larger phenomenon, the emergence of a new style of film-making that goes hand-in-hand with the so-called Dogma manifesto (signed in 1995 by Danish director Lars von Trier and others).
Most importantly, however, the film remains controversial for its honest portrayal of teenage (and even pre-teen) sexuality and drug-use. I was 17 years old in 1995 when Kids came out. Although I was in a less urban, less multicultural and non-American city, I stilled recognized elements of my environment in the film. When I see it today, it feels even more realistic, as I can now look at my own teenagerhood with some distance and compare it to the film.
Not everyone enjoys this film. In fact, several think it is unwatchable garbage. It is certainly not entertaining in the traditional Hollywood sense, but it is a very valuable watching experience and I think everyone should at least give it a try.
Quite apart from all that, it features several boys of all ages and of different ethnic backgrounds. I was quite surprised at how difficult it was to find a few decent stills from the film on the Internet. Here are a couple of samples. Someone needs to do a gallery of caps of this one.
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