Kids. - movie reviews

Art in America, Oct, 1995 by Liza Bear

The film's third main character, Jenny, 16 (Chloe Sevigny), is one of Telly's victims. With her short blond hair, demure expression and blue top with thin white border, Jenny looks like a Seventeen cover girl but seems too intelligent to fall for Tellys line. Accompanying her more promiscuous, exotic-looking friend Ruby, 17 (Rosario Dawson), who's had eight or nine partners (she's already lost count), to a clinic, Jenny learns that she's become HIV-positive from her single sexual encounter. The worst can and does happen.

Increasing in suspense and poignancy, the rest of the story splits along parallel tracks as Jenny, alone and anguished, attempts to pass on the news to Telly before he makes his next conquest, a gorgeous 13-year-old named Darcy (Yakira Pegueiro). It's a gauge of Jenny's character and of the film's bleakness that she is unable to rise to the occasion and accomplish her mission, although the editing is so tight that the suspense is kept up to the last possible moment, with devastating consequences.

Clark was able to give Kids the same insider feel he brought to Tulsa by hanging out in Washington Square Park, from which most of his cast is drawn, until everyone felt comfortable with him around. While Kids, with its hyperactive grainy, gritty images, is as high-energy as Tutsa is low-keyed in its junkie anomie, both share a terminal desperation.