The film, Kids (1995) by Larry Clark, is an excellent example of a controversial film that brings a variety of themes to light such as sex, violence, drugs, alcohol together into a realistic true-to-life story.
It follows the story of Telly, a skateboarder, who likes to 'deflower' virgins since he believes he can sleep with them without protection and would not catch a sexually transmitted infection. However, the story takes a twist when an ex-partner, Jenny, goes to the local sexual health clinic and discovers she is HIV-positive. The rest of the movie shows her desperate attempt to tell Telly he is HIV-positive and prevent him from sleeping with other girls. Jennie is raped at the end by an inebriated Telly's best friend, Casper, and the film concludes with a hallowing message: "What happened?"
Is this film bad? It certainly has a visual impact on the audience from the beginning: graphic sex scene and then, open use of drugs and alcohol by under-age teenagers. Whether this would influence people to go out and do these things I would hesitate to agree. Teenagers are known to go and do rebellious acts and even by watching this film, I do not think it would make a difference on any statistic you could attempt to analyse.
In the end of the day, cinema provides a form of informing/entertaining people. The film, Kids, is one that should be watched to understand the lives that some teenagers experience in North American inner cities, like New York, and the reasons behind them. Is this film in bad taste? Shall it be an influence on young people? No, but it shall remain controversial since no-one can ever agree what is right or what is wrong. I was initially surprised at some of the content, but I believe the direction and acting were excellent and made the film almost documentary-like and real.
I have provided a link for the 25 most controversial films in cinema of all time: http://www.listsofbests.com/list/7650
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