Kids
(1995)
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A group of street-tough Manhattan teens fight, party, take drugs, have sex, and scoff at the consequences in this unflinching account of one day in their lives. Larry Clark's controversial, bleak portrait of societal decay originally garnered an NC-17 rating, which the filmmakers surrendered, opting instead to release the film unrated. KIDS features the screen debuts of Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson. |
Baby-faced teenager Leo Fitzpatrick here plays a self-styled “virgin surgeon”, who spends his days beating up street trash, getting drunk and stoned and deflowering very young girls. One of his conquests (Chloë Sevigny) tries to track him down to tell him he's HIV-positive while still dazed from her own diagnosis. Acerbically scripted by Harmony Korine and directed by influential underground photographer Larry Clark, this disturbingly explicit look at Generation X “skateboard culture” poses difficult questions and offers few easy answers. Clark's issue-raising treatise was deemed offensive exploitation by some sectors of society, but it is in fact highly moral and thought provoking.