The Sex Is Real
Releases:
Theaters: August 31, 2002
DVD: November 10, 2003
Cast:
-Adam Chubbuck
-James Ransone
-Tiffany Limos
-Maeve Quinlan
-Amanda Plummer
-Wade Williams
-James Bullard
Plot Summary:
An intense scrutiny of the lives of four teenagers, all childhood friends & their parents. Their unmasked lives are full of violence, sex, hatred & drugs.
My Thoughts:
There are not many non-pornographic films that show the amount of explicit real sex that the film Ken Park does. The films director Larry Clark, director of the film Kids (1995), and Bully (2001) has a knack for capturing the essence of teenage angst and culture.
The film delves into the lives of several teenagers and their destructive home lives. It explores the unsettling themes of teen sex, drug abuse, alcoholism, incest, child abuse, and suicide. In the world of Ken Park, nothing is what it seems and there is little tangible reality besides sex.
This film is very explicit. If viewing sex acts bothers you than you probably shouldn't watch the film because it can and does get easily pegged as a piece of pornography. However, Ken Park is not a pornographic film. It is not meant to be viewed for sexual purposes but rather the sex in the film is used to underscore the complete tragedy of these teens lives.
The film is a piece of art. And it offers a real and gritty look into the psyche of the American teenager. It crosses gender and racial lines to show that life is not only fucked up for boys or girls, or for white or colored people, but life is hell for everyone. That theme I think offers a uniting thread for not only the characters in the film but the viewers of the film as well.
So, I give this movie five stars for the subject matter and the audacity and bravery it took to show it without any censorship.
