directors/cinematographers
Larry Clark
Ed Lachman
screenwriter
Harmony
Korine
stories
and characters by
Larry Clark
producers
Kees Kasander
Jean-Louis Piel
editor
Andrew Hafitz
cast
James Ransone (Tate)
Tiffany Limos (Peaches)
Stephen Jasso (Claude)
James Bullard (Shawn)
Mike Apaletegui (Curtis)
Adam Chubbuck (Ken Park)
Wade Andrew Williams (Claude's Father)
Amanda Plummer (Claude's Mother)
Julio Oscar Mechoso (Peaches' Father)
Maeve Quinlan (Rhonda)
Bill Fagerbakke (Bob)
Harrison Young (Tate's Grandfather)
Patricia Place (Tate's Grandmother)
mpaa rating: NR
running
time: 98m
telluride
premiere: August 31,
2002
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other larry
clark films
reviewed on this website:
- kids
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I was not, to put it mildly,
a big fan of Larry Clark's 1995 debut feature Kids.
It smacked to me too much of conscious art-house outrage, and
I ignored Clark's subsequent films -- Another Day in Paradise,
Bully, and Teenage Caveman. Having now seen Ken
Park, I wonder if I should go back and visit his other films.
Ken Park continues Clark's obsession with the seamy side
of suburban teenage life -- the stoners, the skaters, the casual
sex. But this film holds together -- as both a narrative and
an artistic piece -- far better than Kids (which, like
this movie, was written by Harmony Korine). And with Ed Lachman
on board as co-cinematographer and co-director, the movie has
a luscious, professional sheen. You may be appalled by some of
what you see in Ken Park, but aesthetically it's not a
handheld skank-fest -- much of it is rather beautiful.
The eponymous character Ken
Park is a freckled kid who performs an act of violence right
after the opening credits. He's not really referenced again till
the end, when we find out what drove him to it. Most of the movie
deals with kids who knew him: Shawn (James Bullard), who's sleeping
with his girlfriend's hot mom; Peaches (Tiffany Limos), who lives
with her devoutly Christian dad, a widower worshiping at the
altar of his dead wife; Claude (Stephen Jasso), whose macho dad
despises him; and Tate (James Ransone), a weirdo who lives with
his grandparents and loudly berates them. Ken Park differs
from Kids in that we see the parents as well as the kids
-- and, surprise, the parents are often drawn sympathetically
even through their flaws.
If you've heard of Ken Park
at all, it's likely because of its content, which makes Kids
look like Teletubbies. Explicit sex (and I mean explicit,
like triple-X explicit), masturbation, and near-incest are all
on the menu. For this reason, the film has had a terrible time
finding a distributor in America, and it's been banned outright
in Australia. But if the far more pornographic Baise-Moi
got a distributor here, so should Ken Park, which has
more going for it than hardcore imagery and shock. Harmony Korine
has always had an incongruous sweet side -- sometimes I think
that bothers people more than if he were just straight-up nihilistic
-- and it comes out here in an odd yet moving scene in which
Tate, having just gotten into a shouting match with his grandfather
over a game of Scrabble, goes outside and joins a group of friendly
black girls in a game of jump-rope. Innocence is given its due
here. Even the climax (no pun intended), in which three of the
teenagers participate in a menage a trois, is handled
with equal parts candor and tenderness. Here, finally, Clark
takes the skankiness out of teen sex, making it into a romantic
idyll.
Some of the events in the movie
(Clark says much of it is based on actual happenings), I think,
are designed more for aftermath effect. If you're the pregnant
wife of a man who got drunk last night and tried to fellate your
teenage son, how do you act? Amanda Plummer, a fixture in indie
movies, plays the scene with an emphasis on bewildered denial
-- the fact of what happened is simply too ugly for her to wrap
her brain around. In a few words, she makes you understand why
women like her "stand by and don't do anything." When
Peaches' dad catches her in a bit of bondage play with a naked
boyfriend, what follows has a certain insane logic and cuts right
to the chase -- you can see it coming, but you don't actually
expect the movie to go there. Ken Park is more a study
of adults in extremis than a scuzzy portrait of teen life;
it has more in common with Todd Solondz' Happiness
than with Kids.
The movie -- intentionally,
I assume -- leaves various plot threads dangling, much like life.
Few of the stories have a neat cap, except the one that ends
in murder. It's more an excuse for moments that cut to the quick,
like the early scene of a kid more or less beating a declaration
of love out of his younger brother, or a scene in which one kid
tells another that he should be grateful he has a dad,
even if his dad's an asshole. (It's a testament to either Korine's
writing or the young actor's improv skills that the sentiment
doesn't come off as preachy.) Ken Park is about people
lost in a haze of contempt and despair, trying to wrest some
love or relief out of the situation. It reached me where Kids
missed me, and those who had similar feelings about Clark's earlier
work might want to give Ken Park a day in court -- even
if Australia won't.
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