***½/****
starring Tiffany Limos, James Ransone, Stephen Jasso, James Bullard
screenplay by Harmony Korine
directed by Larry Clark & Ed Lachman
by Bill Chambers Making Happiness look like Dumbo, Ken Park does not push the envelope–Ken Park runs the envelope through a paper shredder, douses it in lighter fluid, and sets it aflame. And then urinates on the ashes. The latest from Larry Clark, the film was co-directed by veteran cinematographer and frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Ed Lachman, and if you're worried that this Zaphod Beeblebrox would result in the muting of Clark's voice, think again. If anything, we sense the pair playing a wicked game of one-upmanship. Just who or what is a Ken Park? He's the Big Chill figure uniting several mixed-up youths, however incidentally. The people in the photograph that Shawn (James Bullard) illuminates for us in opening narration are all acquaintances of "Crap Neck" ("Ken Park spelled backwards"), though they socialize together only rarely on-screen, for too busy is Shawn performing oral sex on a much older woman, Claude (Stephen Jasso) averting his physically abusive father (Wade Andrew Williams), Peaches (Tiffany Limos, far less irritating than she was in Clark's Teenage Caveman) averting her psychologically abusive pop (Julio Oscar Mechoso), and Tate (James Ransome) averting his grandparents, whose crime seems to be their elderliness. Each sequence in Ken Park–a sex-themed anthology, more or less–builds to an orgasm, but the climax becomes less an occasion of joy as the film wears on. Unlike Clark's Kids, Ken Park takes the pleasure out of intercourse without preaching against promiscuity. Rather, it's an anti-family picture that reaches an almost Reefer Madness level of hysteria towards parental figures in its dogged march of dysfunction. (Wait 'til you get a load of the last line of the picture.) Clark's voyeuristic grit and Lachman's candy-coated visual sense are an odd but happy marriage–it's the slickest kiddie-porno the former has made yet, almost functioning as the next step in Britney Spears. While Clark and Lachman will be taking heat for Ken Park's explicitness for years to come, their first priority is to exploit our collective squeamishness. With this one X-worthy, ultimately heartbreaking black comedy, they become Catherine Breillat's American soulmates. Bless ya, Larry. PROGRAM: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
