The subplot with Peaches' father goes, plotwise, the inevitable Carrie route, but between its cliches and us stands the actor, Julio Oscar Mechoso, who imbues Peaches' father with a gentle, plaintive complexity and sincerity that takes him (and us) far, far from the lascivious, done-to-death arc he's in.
I feel a need to disclaim: the plot is weak, the screenplay awkward, and the film direction and cinematography are uninspired.īut the performances are full of life, and full of really considered, gentle acting choices. I'm desensitized to sex in films I think at this point, and I have a natural response to and fondness for films where nothing happens: so the former did not throw me, though I do not think it was necessary for the sex scenes to be unsimulated, and the latter was a feature, not a bug. But then again, that's not a movie that gets made all that often. Ken Park is not a meaningful commentary on youth, on parenthood, on abuse, or even on sex it's barely a commentary at all, beyond offering the liberatory potential of consensual interactive sex itself not as a reaction against abuse but as a sort of salvation in itself and of itself in a world inevitably full of abuse. This by way of – preface? apology? disappointment in myself? for the fact that on balance, I liked this one.
Every so often, however, I leave an artistic encounter where after carefully checking my feelings as if palpating an abdomen, I confirm that they are what they are – and what they are is not what I might have wanted them to be. I think they are Correct and I can back up why. Most of the time, I am confident in my opinions.
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