Kids

For once, the hype is right on the money. Kids is an emotional sucker punch, a raw, dirty, disturbing piece of cinéma vérité filmmaking that simultaneously hooks and repulses you from its opening scenes of the teenaged Lothario Telly (Fitzpatrick) adrift in his favorite pastime: deflowering young girls.

After the shockingly on-target coitus during which the practiced youth assuages his young lover's fears with hollow promises of respect and ongoing warmth (his by-rote words carry all the weight of a thrice-used condom, but the virgin in question is oblivious in the heat of the moment), Telly – the self-proclaimed “virgin surgeon” – cruises off to hook up with pal Casper (Pierce), who plies him for details of the tryst, living vicariously through his friend. On the other side of the city (New York), Jennie (Sevigny), a past conquest of the “de-virginizer” goes for an HIV screening as moral support for a friend. The friend comes up negative, but Jennie, with Telly being her one and only lover (and that was last summer, with no phone calls or tender words since), is stricken to find out she's a carrier. Frantic, confused, and afraid, she numbly wanders the parks and boroughs of a sweaty, grimy New York trying to find Telly to alert him to the situation.

Director Clark (previously best known for his gritty photos of urban street kids and hollow-eyed junkies) uses Jennie's dazed meanderings as a way to explore the seamy underbelly of America's urban youth. We see Telly and his friends hanging out, getting drunk, smoking dope, fighting, fucking (there's no sex here, no lovemaking, just simple unromantic rutting), and generally acting without any moral compass whatsoever. They're kids playing at being grown-ups playing at being time bombs. Clark's brilliant eye keeps the film running as an edgy, in-your-face observation of what many kids consider a normal day's events.

The loud public outcry that accompanied the release of Kids – that it was little more than an exploitative attempt at teenage titillation – is as silly as Telly's come-ons. Anyone who's been out clubbing in an urban area after 2am will find few surprises in what Clark depicts. Shocking, yes, but hardly surprising; the film, perhaps not unintentionally, feels very much like a documentary. Disturbing, harrowing, visceral, and even sporadically humorous, Kids is one of those rare films that begs the description “a must-see.” For once, it's the truth.