Interestingly enough, Little Children is hardly about children at all. Or is it? I suppose it was director Todd Field’s intention to justly interrogate childhood in his sophomore project, to probe its life, its essence, and the intensity with which it evolves. Little Children expertly plants seedling stories of young adult suburban marriages, tends to them gently as they entangle, and relishes in the fruit of a brilliantly harvested ending.
Kate Winslet is Sarah Pierce, a young, unhappily married woman disillusioned by her failure to fuse a Master’s degree with motherhood. She spends her afternoons in the neighborhood park with her young daughter, Lucy (Sadie Goldstein), surrounded by other young moms perfectly satisfied to be perched on park benches like birds on a wire. The object of their recent gossip is the elusive and incredibly handsome park-side ‘prom king’, Brad (Patrick Wilson.) Through an instant intimacy established by the swing sets one day, Sarah discovers Brad’s dissatisfaction with his role as house dad and his reluctance to embrace his only alternative: passing the bar exam as his breadwinning wife (Jennifer Connelly) so desires. As the two use their children to safe-guard their budding romance and eventual affair, the entire town rallies against the release of the neighborhood pervert, Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), after two years of jail for indecent exposure. Leading the league of parents on a crusade to chase Ronnie out of town is ex-cop and adult football captain, Larry (Noah Emmerich), who has his own grief when it comes to children. The story ripens with misdirected hatred, violence, and sexuality, until it is fully fleshed out and perfectly rounded by the movie’s end.
There is so much about Little Children which resounds of Field’s directorial debut, In the Bedroom: the complex network of characters, the sexual frankness. But there is something deeper here, richness and dimension that In the Bedroom only tapped. I’d say it is sheer brilliance responsible for the way Field evoked fairytale on screen from both Tom Perrotta’s highly acclaimed novel and the pages of Madame Bovary which the movie gently referenced. Little Children is a stunning visual. It is the kind of movie that pays attention to images of rain falling through lace curtains and casting droplets of shadows on shelves of well loved books. It is the kind of film that draws visual parallels; I especially enjoyed Brad and Sarah’s laundry room love scene beside her intuitively timed washing machine.
But, of course, the performances in Little Children absolutely make this film, and not entirely in the way I would have expected. Winslet is perfect; the inner workings of Sarah’s thought, emotion, fantasy, and rationale are painted so wonderfully in her face and evoked exceptionally in her dialog. Surprisingly though, it is Haley’s portrayal of sexually deviant, yet terribly tormented, Ronnie that steals the show. Jackie Earle Haley had been astray from both big and small screens for over ten years prior to his role in Little Children, but the immensity of his performance shows no lag in the Bad News Bears star’s ability. Overall though, Little Children fantastically constructed a cast of characters, all frustrating, all endearing, and all adult in a very childish way.
Liz Licorish
Comments directed to: LizFlix@elitestv.com
