"I don't like how I felt the movie pushed the "sex is bad" in general moral rather than "respectful sex is what should be sought out"."

I didn't see it attempting to create an idealized world in order to promote what "should be;" and then choosing the wrong "should."

I didn't see it as the film's job to show respectful sex happening in this milieu any more than it is the job of a film about the Third Reich to show a defeat of anti-semitism before the Death Camps begin.

But yes, I hold a "downer" film to a higher standard than an upbeat film. I don't require a "Hello Kitty" film to have something true to convey. But if you're going to depress me, you need to be saying something true about the world.

Films which look at the lives of "grotesques," are treading a particularly difficult line. They can easily derail into directorial self-indulgence. Sometimes they cast their net too wide and make it implausible that everyone everywhere is acting abysmally. Or sometimes they turn their villains into caricatures we will never encounter.

Harmony Korine's thing is to step-back and NOT moralize where others would. I think it takes a certain amount of courage to show the bad behaviour for what it is while avoiding any authorial nod that the viewer SHOULD see this as bad.

And yes, you don't see the moral comeuppance that so many others might engineer for a evildoer. Instead, he tends to demonstrate that evil results more often from shallow empty goals. And the "comeuppance" is that it creates shallow empty lives.

I think that there's plenty of room for films that show the rewards of treating others with respect. Or even which show the journey from emptiness to value and meaning. And for films which do moralize ( although preferably with some subtlety. ) But there's also room for films which just look and let the viewer judge. ( Though more often you have to go to foreign films to see cinema which doesn't come equipped with a "lesson learned" by the end. )

Dante