If Clark's raw, controversial, documentary-style account of 24 hours in the lives of a group of New York early-teens is to be believed, we'd better watch and worry. Few of the kids seem bothered about anything except meaningless sex, whatever drugs or booze is available, and the odd bit of mindless violence. True, Clark and his writer
Harmony Korine
try to adopt some sort of cautionary standpoint (one girl is diagnosed as HIV-positive after just one sexual experience; drugs are not exactly glamorised), but the tone is relentlessly sordid, the view of these pubescent hedonists so hermetic, that the film-makers' 'honesty' seems exploitative and sensational. The film may not say anything new, but the way it says it does, in the end, make it some sort of landmark. Depressing.