Kids

Kids (1995) caused an argument the day it opened and is still causing one thirty years later. It was Larry Clark's first film, written by Harmony Korine at nineteen. One summer day in New York. Telly, seventeen, is interested in one thing, which is sleeping with girls who have not slept with anyone. He and his friends drift through the city skating, drinking, fighting. On the same day a girl named Jennie learns she is HIV positive and works out she got it from him. The rest of the film is her looking for him. Most of the cast were real skaters found on the street. Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson both made their debuts. The documentary texture is the film's power and also the core of the complaint against it: some read it as honesty, others as an adult director putting children on display. The second objection is serious and we are not dismissing it. It could not get a normal American release because of its rating, so a separate company was created to distribute it. Who should skip it: underage sex, drug use and a rape are all shown directly. For most viewers this is not a watchable film. Who it is for: anyone studying nineties American independent cinema or the HIV panic of that decade.