The Smell of Us

The Smell of Us, although sounding like a good film in its festival write up is in fact the worse and hardest things I've ever had to watch.

The film is void of narrative or character development and in its place is scene after scene of vulgarity passed of as artistic.

The Smell Of Us, made be questions the entire notion of film as a medium.

Do yourself a favor and on the night you were planning on seeing this film, do something more enjoyable and less harmful to your psych instead, like punching yourself in the face. or sitting alone in a dark room.

not only a bad film, but a bad moment in human history.

I used to know a guy who would start a sentence and then halfway through realized he didn't know what he wanted to say. He'd stop mid-sentence and then go "You know?" expecting you to magically understand how it ended.

I lost track of him, but I think he went on to direct this movie.

I'm sure this paints an apt picture of a generation I haven't been in touch with for at least thirty years, and I do enjoy this almost voyeuristic view into the world of others.

As far as I could see it, anyway. If the kid with the camera in your movie is doing a better job of holding it steady than the camera person on your movie, you might have filled out the names on the callsheet wrong.

The main reason I sat out this movie is because it's not very long, but mostly I sat here riding out the credits in hopes of seeing one more scene that answered something.

I understand that movies like this and others I've now seen on my quest to view something different often don't have a traditional plot, or an ending, but I'm going to need a little more than "rent boy on skateboard" to work with.

I get that kids are just being kids, so never mind that. Just at least give me a clue as to how Rockstar factors into all this. Something. Anything.

There are people out there, I'm sure, who like and maybe even understand this movie.

If you are like me and just getting into the alternative movie catalog, this is not a great starter.

I watched all Larry Clark 's movies. My favorite is Another Day in Paradise. So not much surprise when I saw this one. It was as expected. If you don't already like or know Larry's work you'd better not watch it. But note that there is not really an end : the reason is the main star Lukas Ionesco left before the end. He said in an interview that L. Clark used him and basically freaked out, fired before the end many of the kids and acted very "strangely". To the point that the mother of Lukas called Larry a pedophile in an interview. When asked about his thoughts about that Lukas admits that's too much though if he meet L. Clark again all he would have to say to him would be : F**** You... Concerning some reviews about "what a waste of money", just know that the film was funded at almost 100% by french tax payers therefore there is no need for commercial exploitation for that movie.

Larry Clark, as many have said before, is a divisive filmmaker and doesn't make art to please people, he has never done, he makes it to show what someone else wouldn't.

Which a reasonably respectable goal I would have thought. Now when that includes the interesting and "self destructive" life's of skateboarders in Paris this ethos I believe works well. It's a subject probably fairly niche (I don't know I'm not sure how big skating is in Pairs) but either way he's bringing something "new" to the table.

I was also surprised at how well incorporated the themes of social media and attitudes to filming sex and the care in protraying youth views of sex and sexual situations (not something Clark is unfamiliar with you alright we'll give him it anyway).

Where I feel it falls short is mainly routed in its lack of character development or any form of change. It's fine to have a "no real plot", "stuff happens" film but even the most void of plot movies have some over arching idea to hold it together and push the characters, even a little, through their lives. It's easy to criticise this and for someone to say "well that's the point" and it's like yeah but you need something more. Just a little.... Please Larry. Otherwise all the nicely shot scenes and interesting themes will be for nothing and whatever message you're trying to portray will be lost.

The obvious comparison is Larry's own film "Kids" which has little structure but has one over arching idea of AIDS to tie it together and made it engaging. Or Marfa Girl had the threat of the border control guy and the threat of being found out doing dodgy stuff I dunno.

Larry Clark has all the skills and interest to do something genuinely powerful. He can show all the "realism" he wants, all the hardcore sex, but without anything to truly make us care, beyond it being "real", then I find it hard to believe people will take it on as well as Larry would hope.

Getting a bad vibe after yet another young sex and drugs film from Larry Clark.

just saw this youtube version it wasn't 90 minutes but 75 minutes long. bad quality in youtube, but it is there.

budget of €3.500 000.- what a complete waste of film production money, if they can't even put a decent youtube video, and why youtube first? Well it isn't worth seeing in cinema anyway. But a youtube movie shouldn't cost €3,5 million to make.

complete movie; waste, drugs, prostitution, skateboard, alcohol, sex, sex and more sex. preferably with young looking skaters. It seems to be Larry Clark's fetish to make sex films with young adults/teens. Have FBI looked into this? there is NOTHING new about this, it is just yet another Larry Clark film with the same theme as many others, and it gives me a bad vibe.