Larry Clark's 'Kids', an uncompromising look at the lives of a group of contemporary New York teenagers, attracted a certain amount of criticism on release for its supposed prurience. Viewed ten years later, it's a bit hard to see what all the fuss was about. Like most of the films criticised most virulently by the moralist right, it is in fact a deeply moral film itself, exposing but condemning, rather than celebrating, the hedonistic lifestyles it depicts. The portrait it paints is also very believable; yet the film is slightly less interesting than the controversy suggests. Kids behave badly: it's hardly news, and unlike Ken Loach, Clark never attempts to put his portrayal into a wider social context. Without this, it takes a storyline centred on HIV infection (a relatively rare phenomenon among heterosexuals) to provide some sense of urgency into proceedings. Also, it's noticeable that one aspect of teenage life is missing from the film, namely the tendency of teenagers to exaggerate, particularly when talking about sex: these kids actually have sex as often as they talk about it, which is I suspect atypical. If you meet some kids in the street talking filth and acting boorishly, you may well decide the best thing to do is ignore them and wait for them to grow out of it. If you really want to experience more of such behaviour, then watch this film, which to me seemed anything but prurient; but not a little dull.
Review of Kids
