Ken Park (2002)

"From the director of Kids"

The thin line between art and pornography has been challenged between artists all around the world in cinema. Honestly, the one filmmaker who passes this line into borderline pornography has got to be Larry Clark. Clark’s debut feature film Kids caused a whole bunch of controversy surrounding the extreme graphic sex of the film. Apparently, his graphic depiction of teen sex and life has gotten way worse.

Ken Park follows the lives of four friends after the suicide of a character in the beginning. It also follows their relationships with their dysfunctional families in their California hometown. The film’s themes include sexuality, incest, and murder. The title doesn’t come from a location but is in fact the name of a character. His death is used as a plot device at the end of the film.

This movie is what you would call an art film or an experimental film. But it’s nothing but pure exploitation. The actors, whom are all above eighteen, all participated in unsimulated sex scenes, which are actual sex scenes. I am a fan of art films, which mostly explore sex, but this film wasn’t entertaining at all, just very vile. It was also very sick to see these actors, who looked no older the 16, do these acts. All in all, the sexual content was too awful to be even considered pornography.

The film was directed by Larry Clark, as mentioned, and features his trademark vile disgust for adults; it seems that his films only focus on teenagers. His “specialty” on featuring controversial themes and casting unknown actors does grant him some respect for the art, but it is his crossing of the aforementioned line that loses our respect for him.

Ken Park really doesn’t satisfy the average filmgoer, and I don’t recommend it. I give the film a disappointing 2 out of 5. By the way, due to a argue between the director and the film’s distributor, the film was never released in America, so fortunately, you can’t purchase the DVD.