Reeling Backward: "Kids" (1995)

Watching "Bully" was compelling enough to make me want to investigate the film oeuvre of director Larry Clark further, and I thought going back to his controversial debut movie, "Kids," was a logical choice.

Clark has an interesting biography for a filmmaker. He made his name as a photographer, specializing in lurid portraits of young (often underage) subjects engaged in drugs and sex. He made his first attempt at filmmaking in his early 50s, recruiting a 19-year-old skateboarder named Harmony Korine to bang out a script reflecting the wastrel lives of himself and his peers floundering around New York City.

(Korine has gone on to a fitful cinematic career of his own, recently directing "Spring Breakers.")

The cast was made up entirely of unknown amateurs, with two now-famous actresses making their debuts: Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny. Both are vibrant presences in the film, especially Dawson, who comes off incredibly naturalistic and at ease.

Justin Pierce is also very good as Casper, though Leo Fitzpatrick is often leaden and unconvincing as Telly, the ostensible lead character. Other characters float in and out of the action, hanging out with Casper and Telly as they wander around the city, drinking, smoking dope, getting into fights and having indiscriminate sex.

The story unfolds on two separate tracks, initially divided by gender. Ruby (Dawson) and Jennie (Sevigny) talk boisterously with their girlfriends about their sexual escapades, while Telly, Casper and a bunch of guys do the same. It's both shocking and funny, listening to kids ranging from age 12 up to maybe 16 discuss things like blow jobs and anal sex.

We suspect that at least some of them are bluffing about their experiences, but we know Telly is not. The very first scene involves him convincing a 12-year-old girl to have sex with him. With his angular, scrawny body, crooked teeth and mush-mouth speech, Telly does not seem like much of a Don Juan. But his specialty is enticing and deflowering very young virgins -- whom he then immediately disposes of.

One of his conquests was Jennie, who never had sex before or since. Ruby, though, has had enough sexual partners to fill a lifetime, and she's worried about having AIDS. A flashback scene shows her getting tested at a local clinic a week earlier, with Jennie coming along for moral support, and getting tested while she's there. The Q&As with the clinic nurses are disturbing, both for the bored tone of the questioners and the shocking answers Ruby provides.

It's soon revealed that Ruby is OK, but Jennie is HIV positive. It's important to keep in mind that in 1995, having HIV was considered a virtual death sentence. The only question was how long you had to live.

Since Jennie only every had sex with Telly, it stands to reason she got HIV from him -- which also means his roving conquest of the city is exposing who knows how many very young girls to the disease. She sets off to find Telly and warn him, and especially any girls he might be wooing, of the danger.

Beyond this narrative thread, there really isn't much story in "Kids." Much like the early half of "Bully," Clark's camera just follows the kids around in a cinema verite style as they indulge in disturbing behavior. Indeed the film, which received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, was perceived as a documentary by many audiences.

About that NC-17 -- the depictions in the film aren't really that outrageous, other than showing underage characters having sex and doing drugs, though some of the actors were actually over 18. (Sevigny was 20 when the film was shot, but with her short blonde pixie cut, looks about 14.) Even though the actors are sometimes partially or fully undressed, Clark's camera carefully avoids showing breasts or genitals -- unlike "Bully," which practically leers at its cast's young bodies.

Clark seems to have a fixation for a certain body type: extremely lean and hairless, stuck somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. The actors always look underfed, and it's notable that although we see them smoking and drinking up a storm, they hardly seem to eat at all. It seems likely that Clark's film contributed to the "heroin chic" look of the 1990s.

"Kids" is hardly a great piece of filmmaking, but several of the performances are standouts, and there's something strangely alluring about his rambling scenes of underage children sitting around, talking trash and getting high.

Clark seems to make no judgment about their bad behavior, merely depicting things going on around us that we'd rather pretend don't exist. Despite its rough ages, there is a vitality and immediacy to "Kids" that is potent and memorable.

Reeling Backward: "Bully" (2001)

No, this column is not about the much-lauded documentary film from last year that looked at kids pushed to the margins of their school community. Instead, I'm catching up with the 2001 drama from director Larry Clark, based on the true story of a group of youngsters who brutally murdered the friend they claimed had been verbally and physically abusing them.

Clark made a name for himself with 1995's "Kids," which like this film focuses on very young (sometimes underage) individuals who smoke, drink, do drugs, have random sex and engage in criminal and violent behavior with little thought or feeling. Clark is a chronicler of a wastrel generation that exists largely in the fevered nightmares of parents and outlier cases of extremist behavior.

"Witness, and lament" seems to be the message of Clark's cautionary tales -- which nonetheless get an undeniable kick out of lurid depictions of the aforementioned sex and drugs.

Like "Kids," "Bully" was a very polarizing film that many critics did not react to very positively. I can see why. Its performances by then mostly-unknown lead actors are often riveting, especially Brad Renfro, Nick Stahl and Rachel Miner. Other cast members, though, deliver amateurishly wooden turns.

 Over time, the movie falls into a river of sameness, so we feel like we're watching endless scenes of the kids hanging out in their bedrooms, smoking pot, riding around aimlessly in cars and using the f-word with a frequency to make Scorsese and Tarantino wince.

The film essentially divides itself into two parts. The first is fun-n-games as the characters party and hook up with each other. They're rebels without a clue, but it's difficult to deny the lurid allure of their bad behavior. The second half deals mostly with the planning, execution and fallout of the murder itself.

Despite the description I've provided, I actually found the former section more disturbing. Clark's camera oozes languidly up and over the bodies of his subjects, girls and boys alike, including full-frontal nudity and rather graphic depictions of sexual couplings. I'm certainly not a prude, but much of this seems ladled in unnecessarily, and lingering longer than it needs to. I think of one shot where a girl is answering her phone while getting a pedicure; the camera's gaze stops at the intersection of her short-shorts, where her outer labia peeks out. I suppose her lack of care about exposing herself is supposed to show her wanton nature, but I just felt creepy in that moment, like a peeping tom assisted by the filmmaker.

I do give high marks to Clark for capturing the south Florida haze of the early 1990s, where everyone seems to live in the same low-squat type of house and depend on their cars and their parents' generosity for their freedom. In this regard he crystallizes the boredom and  aimlessness of spent youth in the balmy heat of the Sunshine State where I grew up.

Renfro plays Marty Puccio, a lifelong friend of Bobby Kent (Stahl), and also the recipient of his abuse. While working in a sandwich shop together, Bobby slams Marty's head into a display case while they're serving two young girls. Despite this, the boys make plans to meet them later for dates -- which consists entirely of sex in Bobby's car.

Ali Willis (Bijou Phillips) is the proverbial wild girl, already a teen mother and not slowing down one bit despite that. She jumps from boy to boy like a leapfrog, and the very idea of committing herself to any one of them would strike her as bizarre. She later agrees to hook up with Bobby again on the dare that he's into some really weird stuff.

Lisa (Miner) is the quieter one, but in some ways more dangerous. After having sex with Marty (which we suspect is her deflowering) she insists that she loves him with all her heart. Even when she announces her pregnancy to him and Marty physically assaults her, Lisa remains hopelessly committed.

In fact, it is at Lisa's urging that the plot to kill Bobby is hatched. She recruits others into the mix, even a "hitman" who turns out to be merely another adolescent loser with gang tattoos, and insistently calls for Bobby's head. "I want him dead tonight," she says on more than one night, until the deed is finally done.

Bobby is indeed depicted as a loathsome creature -- a good student from a good family who hid a blackhearted side from grownups. The movie never really explores his nature enough to understand where this terrible bravado and caustic mindset come from. His father is shown as stern and demanding, but is that enough to push him into virtually raping girls, battering his best friend bloody and bruised, and tempting gay men with promises of Marty's favors?

The homoerotic relationship between Bobby and Marty is given much screen time. Though they never actually have physical contact (beyond Marty's blows), it's clear that Bobby at least sees Marty as a sex object to be exploited.

The wind-up and aftermath of Bobby's slaying are disappointing -- though the actual killing has a chilling spontaneity, no doubt reflecting the actual crime, which is well-documented. Lisa convinces everyone that Bobby is the center of all their problems, even though he actually exists largely outside their social circle. It would seem that if nature were allowed to take its course, he would simply wander away from their lives, going off to a good college while they continue their post-graduation adolescent torpor.

Seven people took part in Bobby's killing, and it is of course absurd to argue that one person could bully seven others to the point where they felt self-defense was their only recourse. Indeed, several of those convicted had never even met Bobby before the night of the murder. Marty, simply by virtue of being Bobby's best friend, was given the harshest sentence of electrocution, though that was later changed to life in prison. Everyone else has already finished their sentences (though at least a couple are currently incarcerated for other crimes).

Interestingly, Lisa received one of the lighter sentences in the case, even though she was the wellspring from which the entire crime was born. Her child was later discovered to be Bobby's, not Marty's -- a brief and confusing scene in the film suggests Bobby raped her after beating up Marty, though the record appears to show she had willing sex with both of them.

There is no doubt that "Bully" is a bold movie, highly disturbing and engaging. But after an hour or so of stoking our prurient interests, director Clark's movie devolves into surely the lamest whodunit in the history of cinema, with the suspects in a dimwitted race with each other to see who can spill their secret the fastest. "Bully" is more interested in teasing than teaching.

2 stars out of four