Ken Park

In a city in California, the skateboarders Shawn (James Bullard), Claude (Stephen Jasso) and Tate (James Ransone) and Peeches (Tiffany Limos) are friends of the suicidal teenager Ken Park (Adam Chubbuck). Shawn has intercourse with his girlfriend and her mother. Claude has an abusive, violent and alcoholic father and a neglectful and passive pregnant mother. Tate is addicted in masturbation and hates his grandparents that raise him due to the lack of privacy in his own room. Peeches practices kinky sex and has a fanatical religious father that misses his wife.

"Ken Park" is a sad story of dysfunctional families and their teenagers. Most of the characters have sick and abnormal behaviors, but fortunately it is just a sample in the universe of director Larry Clark, who seems to like this theme, and does not correspond to the majority of the society. This uncomfortable movie is indicated for very specific audiences. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Ken Park"

The Australian government had this film banned. So, that obviously meant that this obscure film that I had never heard of was worth seeing. Thanks to them and the acclaim of Australian film critics (notably Margaret Pomeranz), I - and I assume many others - sought out this film so we could watch it for ourselves.

Whilst the film is certainly not perfect, and is in many ways superficial in it's treatment of the numerous relationships presented (at 90min, they could have easily added another half hour to expand on these), I am glad that films like this exist, if only because they offer an escape from the increasingly similar plots and content of the majority of modern cinema.

Anyone who finds pornography disturbing will find "Ken Park" disturbing for both the wrong and the right reasons.

Its not pornography, but it will be confused with it easily since it contains many of the same powerful ingredients: nudity and explicit sexual behavior. What separates it from pornography is that "Ken Park"'s intent is not to arouse but to provoke an emotional response by placing these same powerful ingredients within a troublesome relational context. Unfortunately that's also the problem with "Ken Park".

An average viewer can't witness explicit sexual behavior and be unaffected by it. We are all sexual (mostly) and (most of us) respond to visual stimuli. "Ken Park" demands that the viewer suspend that response, look beyond any arousal or outrage generated from the explicit sexuality and focus on the relationships in the film (of which sex is merely the expression). This asks of the average cinema viewer much more sexual maturity than most films ever hope to ask.

We may demand more pressure on the envelope as a viewing public, but the cumulative effect of pushing the envelope is still in the realm of speculative sociolology. Also, the extreme youthful appearance some of the characters in the film will cause some companies to avoid distribution risks. Free speech is one thing; defending accusations of spreading pedophilia is quite another, and few companies can afford that kind of publicity.

Personally, I think that the Clark and Lachman have made a great film; its a moral and compassionate statement. The characters feel very real; in their banality there is real pathos. In fact, the bland dialogue and delivery explains why sex holds such a powerful lure for these kids. They have access to rare delight and comfort with sex and, weirdly enough, a sense of peace. It rings true. The tragedy plays out that they are all compromised by clueless or pathological parent figures and the sexuality reflects a history of thwarted attachment. The final scene with the three main characters together struck me as very bittersweet since it plays more as a fantasy than a likely scenario.

Art enjoys such a complex, troubled relationship with the American public. We are such a rapidly changing audience with a huge appetite for challenge, yet we don't necessarily absorb the changes we witness. As an audience, we expect far more cultural sophistication than our capacity for balanced interpretation. "Ken Park" is evidence of that.

Ok, so the movie tries to express a message about today's youth and their disorientation. It tries it through shock technique, depicting sex at pornographic levels. But really, haven't we all seen it before, in a softer (and much better) way precisely on Larry Clark's "Kids"? I can acknowledge that there was an effort of putting morality together in this one, but really, what comes out even for an attentive spectator is that this movie ends up pushing the limits too much, and becomes boring at it. The result is another shock movie, another art house hardcore piece, that, to me, didn't stick too much. Clearly, more gratuitous than mind-bending. Give us a story instead.

I didn't enjoy this latest offering by Larry Clark. It was as if he took Todd Solondz' Happiness, removed all wit, all semblance of plot and character development, and threw in a few explicit sex scenes for some shock value.

After watching Bully and Kids, I have come to accept Clark's style of storytelling, however I felt that this movie went nowhere. He's usually good at juggling multiple story lines that end up converging in a natural sense, but I felt that in Ken Park he didn't have a enough time to delve into any single character's storyline deep enough for the audience to become engaged with the characters, which to me is a crucial element in any good drama.

When the 1h10 mark came around, I was more alarmed by the fact that there were only 20 more minutes in which to resolve the story than by the incest and murder taking place on screen.

This failure was akin to Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart. I hope Larry Clark's work will only get better after this.