7. Ken Park (2002)
Another teensploitation epic from Larry Clark and Harmony Korine this time drawing its disturbing dynamics from the dysfunctional families of its adolescent protagonists. Ken Park sits with a camcorder in a skate park and blows his head off. We meet the characters. There is Shawn - the most normal one - secretly shagging his girlfriend's mother. Claude, who is abused in every way by his alcoholic father, while trying to protect his pregnant mother. His father chides him for being unmasculine but one night he tries to force Claude into giving him a BJ, forcing Claude to run away. Peaches lives alone with her religious zealot father who finds her in bed with a boy, goes nuts and forces her to participate in a profane ceremony to marry her to himself. Tate is the most unstable. He indulges in auto erotic asphyxiation and kills his grandparents for no stronger a reason than his grandfather cheating at Scrabble. The act of killing turns him on. The film shares their stories and at the end Shawn, Peaches and Claude have a threesome. Ken Park's story is given closure too - it is revealed that he impregnated his girlfriend and when asked if he wishes he was born, or his mother abort him, he decides on the latter and kills himself. Much of Ken Park's watchability stems from your own individual take on the work of Larry Clark. If you think he makes really good and truthful portraits of teen life, then you will lap up Ken Park quite merrily. If you find Clark's constant obsession with portraying adolescent sexuality quite disturbing, Ken Park will repel you. There is much material here to warrant an NC-17 rating with the graphic depiction of auto erotic asphyxiation and masturbation. With the threesome at the end, I was quite offended by Larry Clark's assumption that all teenagers inevitably end up in bed with each other. Couldn't he just, for once, portray an adolescent who is emotionally happy, a stable person and not a bed hopping sex freak? I disapprove of Larry Clark but the sensational material on display drew me in and I watched the film. It is just a rehash of his previous work and as prurient as I expected.