A slice of life in the wrong ‘hood

What’s up with Larry Clark and kids in peril? In his latest lurk into the world of teenagers on the loose, Clark uses first-time actors to enact a fictional version of their own experiences. Set in South Central and Beverly Hills, the story traces a long day in the life of 14-year-old Jonathan (Jonathan Velasquez) and his friends Kico (Francisco Pedrasa), Spermball (Milton Velasquez), Porky (Usvaldo Panameno), Eddie (Eddie Velasquez), Louie (Luis Rojas Salgado) and Carlos (Carlos Ramirez), a group of skaters growing up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in L.A.

“Wassup Rockers” opens with a long take of Jonathan sitting shirtless on his bed, talking enthusiastically and inarticulately about his and his friends’ lives.

The scene is compelling for its immediacy, but it’s uncomfortably intimate too. What’s Clark doing there? The production notes describe the genesis of the project: Clark was on a photo shoot when he met Kico and Porky at a skate park in Venice Beach. Their style -- a throwback to Ramones-era punk -- piqued his interest, and within a few days he was shooting them in skate parks all over the city. The shoot ended but the skating excursions continued, and Clark decided to make a movie about their lives. Sort of.

The first half of the film, after Jonathan’s opening scene and an incongruous scene of a gang member getting shot on the street in broad daylight, settles into a meandering documentary style, trailing the boys as they go to school, hang out at home and hook up with neighborhood girls. The ambulatory camera and naturalistic acting come together in a verite style that comes close to suggesting an unmediated reality -- until Clark’s camera lingers on Jonathan’s bare abdomen and traces the curve of his girlfriend’s breast as they lie in bed together, swapping gum, and the candid sharing of sexual experiences starts to suggest a degree of prompting. Since when do boys share?

The pretense of reality is all but abandoned in the second half of the film, when the friends take what turns out to be a picaresque tour of Beverly Hills. A babe magnet at home, Jonathan’s allure extends west of Doheny, with his adolescent sensuality and his fuzzy mustache. Hardly anyone is immune, from the bike cop who takes the kids’ car but seizes the opportunity to reminisce about his punk rock glory days, to the teen princesses at Beverly Hills High who run their fingers through their hair and invite them home, to the gay photographer whose party they crash.

At a certain point, “Wassup Rockers” transforms from a relatively naturalistic slice-of-life portrait into a surrealistic funhouse trap, where the protagonists find themselves accosted by Brets and Chads straight out of a John Hughes movie and molested by a drunken actress played by Janice Dickinson. (Which is scarier?)

If the movie is to be believed, among the challenges facing Jonathan and his at-risk friends are the creepy libidinous cravings of the very rich. They also encounter plenty of racism, of course, from a “Mexican”-hating (none of the boys are of Mexican origin) cop and a Charlton Heston-like movie star prowling his Beverly Hills bunker fully armed. As the bodies pile up, most done in by accident through no fault of the rockers, the point of the exercise recedes. It’s as if Clark grew bored of the grim reality of the boys’ lives midproject and replaced their background with a fantasy world full of sweet, understanding teenage girls and an underground railroad network of domestic workers at the ready to smuggle Latin boys out of Beverly Hills.

No wonder that by the time they make it home the next morning, they are never more glad to see the gang members who taunt them. After being subjected to that much prurience, you’d cheer at the semi-automatic salute too.

*

‘Wassup Rockers’

MPAA rating: R for pervasive language, some violence, sexual content and teen drinking.

A First Look release. Writer-director Larry Clark. Story by Larry Clark, Matthew Frost. Producers Larry Clark, Kevin Turen, Henry Winterstern. Director of photography Steve Gainer. Editor Alex Blatt. Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. Exclusively at Landmark’s Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A. (310) 281-8223.