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 Kids (1995)
Director:
Larry Clark
Stars: Leo Fitzpatrick, Chloe Sevigny, Justin Pierce
Release Company:
Excalibur Films
MPAA Rating: R
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Kids
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"When you are young not much matters, when you find something you like that's all you got."
As expressed by Telly in Kids, such philosophy sounds perfectly harmless when taken out of context, except by then we already know what Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) really likes: "Fucking is what I love. Take that away, I have nothing." He dreams about fucking, and after waking up he is on the prowl to fuck, and perhaps do a little stealing, drugs, and skateboarding on the side. Living in their own Manhattan subculture, the kids in this film differentiate between making love, having sex, and fucking. Young pimply-faced Telly is into hard core pounding "fucking."
Opening with a long explicit shot of Telly deeply kissing a pubescent 12-year old girl (Sarah Henderson), the self-proclaimed "virgin surgeon" lays his technique on the innocent girl, who mildly protests that she doesn't want to have a baby. Nothing creative in his technique—straightforward lines like, "I just want to make you happy, that's all. You know it won't hurt. I'll be gentle—I promise." Pure bullshit lines that Telly will use again with the next victim, and why not? She believes him.
So Telly enjoys his conquest, leaves the upper middle class home of her parents to join his buddy Casper (Justin Pierce) on the stoop to go over the sexual encounter and explain his philosophy on fucking virgins.
"But like, if you deflower a girl man, man, you're the man. No one can ever do that again. You're the only one. No one, no one, has the power to do that again."
Of course Telly and Casper have no idea what the girls actually think about that "magical" first time experience. Director Larry Clark separates not only separates age groups (isolating the kids from adults), but also juxtaposes the boys and girls in a scene that isolates each of them to talk openly about the way they see sex. Most of the girls were just glad to get it over with, many remarking about feeling embarrassed about bleeding with one telling how the whole summer camp sang "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" after her deflowering. Another relates that she can't even remember the name of her first sexual partner.
Kids looks and feels so much like a cinema verite documentary with its hand held camera work and brutally honest dialogue. The script feels so real that 20-year-old writer Harmony Korine must have intimate knowledge of young street life, or they set up some intensely real improvisations with young actors who know the attitudes and street talk. The language is rough, and even the R-rated version readily available on DVD will shock the uninitiated. That causes wonder about the more hardcore version that received an initial NC-17 rating before being released as unrated into theaters to get a slightly wider release.
These kids live a nihilistic lifestyle far beyond any philosophical nihilistic musings of the 1950s. In many ways, Kids must rant as one of the most disarming films that deal with the 1990s generation—much more than Go! Face it, Telly and Casper are unlikable assholes, who serve no useful purpose in life other than to strive to become the first to pop another young girl's cherry. Contrasted with these two characters is Jennie (Chloe Sevigny, Boys Don't Cry), who helplessly wanders throughout the movie trying to prevent more personal disasters from happening. But the deck is stacked against her with the pervading attitudes and easy availability of drugs.
Many of these kids are portrayed as animals, single-mindedly focused on seeking self-satisfaction through sex, drugs, or skateboarding without any real concerns for any other human beings. Not that the film glorifies this philosophy or lifestyle—it doesn't. There are real health concerns explicitly expressed here like worries about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. Social attitudes like hatred towards gays and wanton violence over pettiness are also explored, as well as the attitudes that the young people have towards sex and human relationships. In fact, Kids could be shown as an after-school special if it could find a way to clean up the language and would deliberately preach its lessons.
But to do so would cause the film to lose its power. There really are some kids who think like this, and these are the kids who should see this film. A few will see the emptiness and recognize the selfish motivations of Telly and his kind. Some of the scarier scenes show how an even younger 12-year old peer group are following along with their older mentors as they toke up and observe the sexual encounters of a party. Some shocked viewers will wake up after watching the debauchery on the screen and come to much deeper insights than Casper does as he stares blankly—"Jesus Christ, what happened?"
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