The Smell of Us

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.

As in most of Larry Clark's movies, there is no coherent story, no head or tail, it's all just anecdotical: flashes of young kids skateboarding, morosely hanging out, exchanging wannabe cool remarks, and sooner or later (mostly sooner) have sex. With much effort and good will I could discern some fragments that seemed to hint at a vague side-storyline, a guy in love with a friend who isn't interested, and he's apparently unable to cope with that. After 85 minutes that's it, the end.

This movie gives an extremely cynical view on young people. In Larry Clark's universe these teens are all self-absorbed and narcissistic, money-hungry, totally void of empathy and obsessed with sex. The few adults in the movie by the way are pictured with equal disdain, either hopeless drunks or demented lechers (mostly both).

I suppose Clark has a purpose with this, but if so, I missed it. The lack of a serious narrative, as well as a cast of only unsympathetic characters, make it very hard to get involved or even to get into the tiniest flow with the goings-on. You just sigh and search for the FF-button by every new nude and sex scene. I'm only guessing, but could it be that Clark is essentially a misanthropist by nature? Or just hates teens? If so, his movies do a great job.

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.

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.

Nothing new from Larry Clark.

The lives and times of a few young skateboarders in Paris. However, their lives consist entirely of skateboarding, getting high and having sex with strangers, sometimes for money...

If you know Larry Clark's work, you'll know he generally likes making movies about young people, with a sleazy angle to it all. This was fine in Kids, which showed the emptiness of their lives, the harmful effects of their actions and how the cycle repeats itself in later generations. Bully was good too, as it had a crime- centred grittiness to it.

However, everything else he has made just uses the Kids formula over and over again. Young people, being depraved.

The Smell of Us certainly follows that formula, to the point that it should be called "Kids in Paris". Nothing new, and doesn't have the profundity that Kids has. It's pretty much sleaze and depravity for shock value sake.

Avoid.