This is a film which streams with sadness.
![ken park movie opening scene ken park movie opening scene](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/5IMAAOSwFnBgxMGk/s-l300.jpg)
We can have strong urges to guard and idealise the images of those we have lost in ways that can prevent us truly seeing our kids.Įach of us will bring our own contexts to Ken Park, as we do to all films. But then, I had a fundamentalist childhood and a father who turned to stabbing the Bible, seeking guidance from random texts when my mother left him, and then tried to recreate her in those around him. When he finds her in bed with her boyfriend he beats them both, then dresses her in her mother's wedding dress and attempts to de-program her.įor me this is the most painful and distressing story in Ken Park. He has raised Peaches to fulfil his idealised image of her mother. Her mother died when she was young, and her father (Julio Oscar Mechoso), is a fundamentalist Christian with some very weird visions. From the police car, we hear his voice-over: 'I never once had a girl really close to me.'Īnd then there is Peaches (Tiffany Limos, a 22-yr-old actress). The scene is dealt with reasonably discretely by multiplex standards. Later he kills his grandparents, in a rage over the scrabble game. He masturbates with a dressing gown belt around his neck, aroused by watching Martina Navratolova playing tennis. Tate is an isolate, reduced to talking with younger kids skipping rope in the street, exploding when his grandfather cheats at scrabble. We don't know what has happened to his parents. Tate downloads macabre pictures from the net and names them after adults he hates. He's been raised by doting, smothering grandparents who can't acknowledge how deeply troubled he is. Tate (James Ransone) is the angriest kid.
![ken park movie opening scene ken park movie opening scene](https://www.filmink.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/kenpark.jpg)
They don't, and when Wade comes home and his sleeping wife pushes him away he stumbles drunkenly into Claude's bedroom and starts to fumble in the shorts of the sleeping boy, who wakes up and pushes him away.Īs the father falls, he slumps in a corner, mumbling 'nobody loves me.' It's a disturbing scene but in no way one which titillates or condones child abuse. His dad goes out boozing with a friend one night, arguing about picking up a young hooker. He's not the son he wanted, a man like him, with muscles. They are all pleased about the new baby but his dad thinks Claude is a sissy, maybe a fairy. His Dad (Wade Williams) has been unemployed for months, his mum (Amanda Plummer) is hugely pregnant. The family meal is a minefield of unresolved tension.Ĭlaude (Stephen Jaso) is a skateboarder like Ken Park. Shawn thinks he might be falling in love with her.
![ken park movie opening scene ken park movie opening scene](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ptUdqEnnzxY/VXw1_8DfJvI/AAAAAAACgyQ/FEtS9ob8PDk/s1600/000-2%2BKen%2BPark%2B%282002%29%2BPoster.jpg)
She thinks he and her teenage daughter make a cute couple. She is the experienced woman in this story playing her part, good with her preschool daughter, organising family outings, inviting her daughter's boyfriend over for a family meal. It's sex based on liking and lust but not, on her part, love. But he's also sleeping with Rhonda (Maeve Quinlan) and she's his girlfriend's mum. Shawn has a girlfriend: blonde, pretty, classically Californian. Shawn (James Bullard) is the savviest of these teenagers, a boy who keeps his eye on his younger brother while his single mum scrubs her kitchen and attempts, uselessly, to referee them.
![ken park movie opening scene ken park movie opening scene](https://highxtar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Highxtar_Avanope_Ken_Park_1.jpg)
This is the eponymous Ken Park, (Adam Chubbuck) and though he's referred to throughout the film we don't discover why he killed himself until the end. He takes a videocamera and a gun from his rucksack and shoots himself. There, he sits, and we see his face scared and determined. We see one of them, all red hair and freckles, zooming along suburban streets to the skatepark. They're sixteen: the opening music tells us this very clearly. Ken Park is the story of four teenagers in a not particularly affluent Californian town. Warning: This review discusses the stories in this film in detail.