Crotch shots

Italian films are unabashedly exploitative. I don't mind that. Larry Clark's films though ALSO tend to be very preachy and alarmist and so all the nudity and the crotch shots come off as rather hypocritical. It's kind of a mixed message to say that teenagers today are going to hell with sex and drugs at the same time you as the filmmaker are not passing up any opportunity to leer at their breasts, butts, and vaginas. He is actually a very American combination of moralistic and leering (just because Americans are more prudish doesn't mean they don't lust after nubile young flesh as much as Europeans do).

I'd actually compare Larry Clark to French/English director David Hamilton. Both started out as photographers and both liked to film adolescent and post-adolescent models in states of undress. Hamilton though never felt he had to cloak it in some kind of "social message" when he filmed a sixteen-year-old girl naked (as Clark does with Kelli Garner in this movie). People, especially American people, really make too big a deal of nudity or the fact that most teenagers are sexually developed and sexually active, but Clark really does as well.

That being said, this IS Clark's best film because it is based on a real incident and a certain GROUP of young people, and doesn't come off as a half-assed indictment of an entire generation like "Kids".