The Smell of Us

Okegesan

The dirty old man hanging out with all those oversexed Paris teenagers in "The Smell of Us" is none other than the voyeuristic pic’s director, Larry Clark. Usually, he’s the one behind the camera, but in what amounts to a French "Kids," Clark can be seen passed out in the opening scene, spilled across the steps of the Palais de Tokyo as skaters swarm around him. Nearly 20 years have passed since Clark’s debut stunned the world — and 30 more since the first photos in his provocative "Tulsa" book were taken – yet his focus remains, as the song says, forever young. Somehow, the fact that these are French kids makes the film seem less likely to shock the world, even though the kinks are far more explicit here than anything but “Ken Park” — not that Clark is any stranger to the NC-17 rating, the relevance of which he handily undercuts, simply by reminding that in the Internet era, minors can see (and do) far worse online.