Review of Kids (2013) by Parker M — 11 Jul 2011

3.5 Stars out of 4.

We are immediately deflowered at the opening of Kids. Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a cocky and manipulative teenager, tricks a 12 year-old virgin girl into having sex with him. It's an experience painful for her, exciting for him. Telly has confessed his affection for a girl who has yet to learn the truth of such a thing. Telly takes advantage of girls, but Larry Clark's Kids never takes advantage of its audience. Our deflowering is simply us realizing this isn't a film about love but woe in a teenage crisis.

In all fairness to Telly (though he deserves little), none of the kids in "Kids" are affectionate people, as they use sex as a shield for their insecurities, not an expression of their tenderness. It's about boys and girls as they live a pointless existence in New York City, a milieu usually romanticized but here it murkily remains in the background as Clark ponders his characters.

I love this cliché: these are not "characters" but people. It's a cliché because I use it so often (under positive circumstances, which is good, no?) but it applies perfectly to Kids, as Clark has not decorated them with motivations and accessible complexities. He observes them the way Altman did - a moving camera showing the relationships of and between the observed, and how they search somewhere or nowhere for a purpose.

Kids covers the HIV era of the 1990s. Telly, the narrator, is HIV-positive and sick-mindedly tries to contract the disease to as many virgins. One girl named Jenny (Chloë Sevigny) received HIV from Telly, and she sets out to stop him before he does the same to others. Uh oh, this sounds like a "plot". Fear not, Clark is smart and sincere enough to fill Kids with voids not narrative. We follow a group of boys and girls as they do nothing, like James Dean and Natalie Wood did in Nicolas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause only Clark is more unflinchingly morose.

Some would call Kids a cynical exercise, and they are right if they spare "exercise." Using this word makes Kids sound shallow and one-dimensional. There is so much to look for in Kids, despite very little happening. There's a small scene when Telly and his friend Casper (the late Justin Pierce) visit some chums and Casper inhales nitrous oxide for a high. Telly denies, saying it's wrong and dangerous. Like these kids, Telly is a walking hypocrisy.

Clark knows it is not valid to criticize these teenagers but to sympathize with them in twisted, almost reluctant ways. No one wants to have well-wishings for Telly, but the truth is he is another misbegotten kid with problems. His flaw, granted, is the centre of the story and up for our scrutiny and disdain. I even had some apathy towards Jenny who roams New York poisoned with the thought she has the most deadliest STD. I felt no urgency in her stopping Telly but I observed Chloe as a teenager dealing with herself on the inside. She's no hero in this story who stops Telly's amoral actions, nothing is that meaningful.

Some call director Clark an exploiter. Kids is not just an interesting study of teenage angst, but it's confident and intelligent enough to deny artifice and tell a story that has no payoff, easy conclusion, or arc. Clark believes these teenagers are leading circular lives, where insecurities predominate them throughout the day and repeat itself. It is unknown when they will mature and grow a fonder, more esteemed understanding of themselves. If ever. Granted, this shouldn't make Kids sound like a film of obvious high intentions. It in fact lives amongst people with low intentions, and doesn't provide any solutions to their problems other than this is simply a difficult phase of a life.

The executive producer of Kids was Gus Van Sant, which is apt since Van Sant would director Elephant and Paranoid Park, two films about teenage angst and guilt, a few years later. These films helped me understand that teenagers - in actuality - are naturally bad actors. Commonly, teenagers - struggling to fit in - try to embody exaggerated personalities and think they are invincible. It's that "cool" phase.

Kids used non-professional actors for these roles (Rosario Dawson's early role was here) and this proves that teenagers do not have to be method actors to give strong performances. They have insecurities that are naturally embedded in them and come with the performance.

Think about that. Because some may dislike the overweening acting in Kids but that's part of the realism, and the facade. Certainly some of Clark's choices are questionable: his subtle voyeurism, relentless cynicism, and narration. I mentioned the narration briefly before. Should Telly be dictating Kids? No. In fact no one should. Everyone is on the same level, equally distraught and inhibited, while also hopeful sex will relieve them of a glum reality.