Kids

Saw Kids, a film from the writer of Gummo and the director of Bully, so this is gonna be an ugly trip through youth culture. The story follows a loose collection of urban teenagers in New York City (I guess) who skate and hang around parks, smoking pot and hooking up. They seem good natured and obviously think of themselves as friendly but they maybe beat a guy to death for daring to speak angrily to them and they all have this tough attitude, so they're troubled (of course.)

The central two teenagers are Telly and his friend Casper. Telly likes to have sex with virgins and, in a voice-over narration near the end, he reveals that that's sort of all he has in his life, this fascination with deflowering virgin girls. Alright fine whatever but we also learn fairly early on that this Telly has the AIDS and doesn't know it. This lends a yet more sinister edge to his constant talk of bangin' virgins. He is the villain of this piece. The hero is the increasingly partied-out Jenny, the girl who learns he has AIDS by contracting it herself, from him. She follows him from party to party always frustratingly one step behind him.

The whole movie is very frustrating. I'm not sure if this movie is supposed to be just luridly shocking, or some kind of Reefer Madness-style cautionary tale, or some self-righteous head-shaking at the youth of today. Any of these is not exactly flattering goals and I suspect it was actually trying for a combination of all three. This film upset me but that is clearly its aim (to upset,) so well done, I guess. There's an extended sequence of the characters just hanging out which is intersting and kind of pleasant (it reminded me strongly of Chain Camera, but this one is scripted.) This film has the reality and serious tone which the Troma films lack and is therefore actually subversive and kind of dangerous (as opposed to (say) Class of Nuke 'em High.)

This film plays as a very lurid tragedy. It aims to be shocking and in parts it is (although compared to A Serbian Film or Salo of course it is as nothing.) It mainly plays on the hand-wringing fears of parents that their sons and daughters are being lead astray which feels like cheap fear-mongering to me. Instead of scaring parents into locking up their progeny, let's be help everyone understand each other. There's a gross feeling I got that these kids are beyond redemption which is a kind of shitty thing to say and especially about children. I think I'm slightly hysterically reading into the film a bit much (as I say, mission Unsettle The Viewer was a success) but it's the sort of shit-stirring film that invites social-commentary-based readings. Bleh. Review over.