In the Flesh: Kids

It took me about half an hour to realize that what Kids reminded me of with its relentless walls of dialogue and incessant, irresistible encroachment of misery into the lives of its characters was The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. It’s as naturalistic as Cook is affected, to be sure, but Harmony Korine’s screenwriting debut shares that essential quality of too much sensation packed into not enough space, like hot vomit overflowing an air sickness bag. Telly (Leo FitzPatrick) is our Albert Spica here, an ever-flowing teenage fountain of casual brutality and misogynist invective trying to fuck every virgin he can find, the younger the better. The film opens with his talking his way through the rape of a twelve-year-old girl as she begs him to be more gentle, and throughout its running time we don’t see him do much more than try to bully, prod, and hector a succession of other girls into the same position. In his wake comes Jennie (Chloe Sevigney), who has just tested positive for the HIV virus after having sex with Telly, trying to find him and stop him from passing it on to anyone else. This is Sevigney’s debut performance and her onscreen presence is immediately relatable, compelling, and deeply sad without being saccharine.

Kids was sold to the public as documentary passed through the lens of fiction, and, leaving the question of that claim’s veracity to the recent documentary We Were Kids, it has the ring of truth. Gangs of half-feral children wander through New York in a haze of hormones, chemicals, and shit-talk, young boys preying on young girls, hot-headed teenagers beating men near to death over minor social interactions, everyone trying to smother their emotions to keep from feeling the overwhelming horror of their circumstances, of their insignificance in the shadow of the largest and hungriest city in America. Directed by Larry Clark, Kids has the look of a documentary, fuzzy and intimate, the sound mixing warm and crackling, like talking to a friend over the phone in the mid nineties. You can see the shape of real need in these abandoned children, whose parental supervision is largely limited to a few overworked mothers with no money or attention to spare, but again and again it emerges as violence, coercion, avoidance, and passivity.

These young people are, in their own way, intimately aware of their proximity to death and destitution. They’re surrounded by the blossoming horrors of the AIDS crisis, idly discussing it with one another as they fantasize about the sex they’re going to have, the drugs they’re going to do, the fights they’re going to win. In filthy apartments they drink themselves numb and rape each other on the squashed and sticky cushions of old, broken couches. There’s nowhere for them to go, nothing for them to do, only the stifling heat of summer beating down on their young backs and the lure of the void in all its deadly incarnations tempting them closer, ever closer to the edge. Its final sequence is harrowing, as Jennie finally catches up with Telly only to find him in the process of having sex with another girl. Tripping, exhausted, and frightened, she leaves without saying a word, unable to overcome Telly’s temper and her own sickness at the knowledge of what he’s doing to his new partner. As she lapses into a comatose state in the living room, another boy creeps close and begins, with disconcerting care and quiet, to assault her, dooming himself even as he further destroys what remains of her life.