This is kind of a mixed bag for me. For one, I love the style of it. The camera work, set design, color palettes, and sound design make the film feel both stylish, realistic, gritty, and lived-in. The actors all feel like real people and it gives a sense that you're watching a real slice-of-life.

However, I have some major issues with the script. For one, I just can't believe that someone like Telly is able to have sex with as many girls as he does, or, for that matter, with the kinds of girls that he does. He punches way above his weight. Knowing what we know now about how HIV spreads, it's also kind of ridiculous that Sevigny got HIV after one sexual encounter with Telly. It feeds into the AIDS sensationalism of the time but doesn't hold up as well now.

I'd believe the story a lot more if Telly was more suave and less of a street kid who liked getting loaded and banging every woman on his radar.

It's still interesting to watch just to see a script from the teenage mind of Korine come to life. However, it's pretty obvious that this script was written by a horny teenager and directed by an even hornier Boomer. Even though the film feels like a gritty realist film, the script suggests it's more of a sexual fantasy. Maybe I was a nerd in high school, but I don't remember kids banging this much.

I appreciate it from an angle in which Telly is like some sort of dark destructive force silently killing off the next generation in New York. His animalistic persona makes him disregard any concerns of the girls he sleeps with. It's like watching the beginning of the death of a decadent society.