Bad Film

They just tried to make me watch Larry Clark's 'shocking and controversial' film, Kids (1995). It's all about a bunch of underage kids doing sex, drugs, petty crime, and mindless violence. I lasted about 45 minutes, then I walked out. Not because I was shocked and controversialised, I was just completely uninterested. For a gritty piece of documentary realism, I found it incredibly contrived and artificial. Chloe Sevigny's technique, the only 'real' actor amidst of a bunch of mumbling Noo Yoik lunkheads, stuck out like a sore thumb. She was the only character given reaction shots. Was this a dramatic device intended to gain audience sympathy for her character, or simply because she was the only person on set capable of handling it? Whichever, it created a glaring imbalance in the film. The skateboard gang attack in the park was equally unconvincing. The shot of the unconcious guy's mashed up face was there purely to say, "Isn't this terrible? Aren't you shocked?" To make a genuinely disturbing film, that shot should have been left out. There are inumerable other things wrong with the movie, but life's too short to go into them.
I've seen one other film directed by Larry Clark. It's called Teenage Caveman (2002), and it's also about kids doing sex and drugs and violence, except it's set in a post apocalyptic future. It's still shite.
Larry Clark used to be a bloody good photographer. If you go to http://www.artnet.de/awc/larry-clark.html you'll find several of his photos, all as fine as the homoerotic goody up there in the top left corner.