Telly is one of a large group of young friends who live for sex, drugs and pleasure with little thought of responsibility or morality. Telly in particular loves sex with girls even younger than him, and they all have to be virgins to please him. However one girl who has only had sex with Telly finds herself testing positive for HIV. She sets out to find him before he can spread the disease any further. I saw this when it came out as it entered the UK in a rage of tabloid anger and middleclass `we'll all be killed in our beds' style furore. Back then I was maybe more giving or maybe more determined to appreciate it simply because I thought the papers had overreacted. I still think the tabloids kicked up a storm for nothing but now I see past the worthy face the film has on and see it in a different light.
The film is worthy, no doubt, those individuals who live like this do exist and are a real problem to themselves and others, however the film tries really hard to shock us. Nobody in this film is `normal' or in anyway considerate they all only care about themselves, they are all open to rape a girl who says no, or beat someone to near death for bumping into them. This leads us to think that everyone is like this and to all be shocked. Yes some (many?) young people like sex and drugs but how many live like this?
But the film wants to over-blow things simply because the shock value adds value to the subject. So we have rape, beatings, AIDS being spread, children barely 10 smoking weed etc and the film has a mix of shock but also a sort of sensationalisation about it like Clarke is rubbing his hands behind the camera ad directing, saying `worse, worse, more, more etc'. This only stops for the final shot and line where the film condemns this but up till then you'd be forgiven for not seeing the judgement.
The cats are most unlikely versions of Kevin Smith's Jay but without the crude wit or charm they make Jay look like a man about town. I know that's there characters but some of them just deliver crude skater stereotypes. I know they're all first time actors but still several have done better since. Fitzpatrick is OK but his character is one-dimensional and we never get to see him have deeper stuff to deal with. Pierce is again a cartoon but at least appears to have something else behind his eyes shame he's dead now. Sevigny is good as is Dawson but that's mainly because they do have something of value to say. The rest are just all there to `shock' us `oh, look' says Larry Clark `they're doing drugs, there's girls kissing girls, there's fights and shocking sex isn't it all lovely and terrible!!!?'.
Overall it's worth a watch maybe once simply because this is a lost world that I'll hopefully never see. But don't get sucked in by the film pretending to be important or smart it's neither simply because it only wants to shock us and it revels in every disgusting or shocking frame.
