Larry Clark’s films have changed the landscape of gritty realism in cinema over the last 20 years. But his latest, The Smell Of Us, has been attracting dubious attention due to its explicit content – something that helped make him famous but seems to be reaching its expiry date.
Clark has worked as a candid photographer and filmmaker since his teens, and his work has always told an often tragic but seemingly true story of youth.
From his own documentation of his friends injecting amphetamines in suburban Tulsa, Oklahoma, to his later films that look into the lives of other dysfunctional subcultures, his work is influential to many, including fellow critically-acclaimed filmmaker, Gus Van Sant.
Clark made his name with debut Kids. It tells the story of a group of New York teenagers, focusing on their sexual activity and substance abuse.
The story is touching, heartbreaking and was groundbreaking in its honesty, surrounding the AIDS outbreak in the mid ’90s. It was fearless and had authenticity and purpose.
The movie felt so real that Telly, played by Leo Fitzpatrick, a young boy who lures virgins in to bed and has sex without protection, claimed that he actually suffered serious harassment from people believing his character to be genuine.
Fitzpatrick performed alongside Justin Pierce, who hanged himself at the age of 25. The two performed in such a way that the story came to life and explored unspoken aspects of America’s youth culture for the first time.
“Larry Clark’s Kids so harrowingly demonstrates these two are part of a spiritually dead teenage culture built on aimlessness, casual cruelty and empty pleasure,” said Janet Maslin from The New York Times in 1995. “Mr. Clark’s vision of these characters is so bleak and legitimately shocking that it makes almost any other portrait of American adolescence look like The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
The piece made waves and split opinions, which is surely exactly what an artist should do.
Bully was arguably Clark’s next ‘hit’ although it wasn’t met with quite the same shock and intrigue as Kids.
It was still decidedly poignant in its message about youth as it followed the true story of a group of teenagers who decide to murder an abusive acquaintance.
This was in turn followed by the erotic drama Ken Park which does all it can to break taboos and shock through its depiction of various abusive relationships and inappropriate liaisons, but lacks any real charm or emotional depth.
There are concerns that in recent years his work has packed less punch and meaning while trying to show more flesh and debauchery just to shock audiences rather than add to the story.
Clark has insisted in an interview with The Guardian that his intent was never to shock. “All my work has been about groups of people you wouldn’t know about otherwise,” he told Ryan Gilbey.
Clark’s latest film The Smell Of Us tells the story of a group of young skaters in Paris who begin to make money through prostitution. However, the film is more visually led by the naked flesh of the borderline-underage boys featured rather than by any discernible storyline, and its loose plot falls short of any real narrative.
“No energy, no joy – just the persistence of the porn addict as everything but Clark’s enthusiasm for flesh withers with age,” was the verdict of Peter Bradshaw, of The Guardian.
What was once the charming and daring voyeurism of an artist seems to have soured. The seediness of this most recent cry for attention risks damaging the reputation Clark made for himself as a visionary film maker and photographer with stories that needed telling.
Featured image courtesy of: Larry Clark, Independent Pictures, Killer Films, Shining Excalibur Films