LITTLE CHILDREN

Director: Todd Field (In The Bedroom)
Starring: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earl Haley

Little Children is an often hilarious, often unsettling look at adultery, and relationships in general, set in the most suburban of upper middle class neighborhoods. It starts quite strongly with laughs and intrigue as the sexual tension between Kate Winslet's marvelous young mother character and her sweet, soft-spoken, ex-quarterback soon-to-be-lover mounts. Once all of the action begins to crumble around the main characters, however, the film begins to lose some of the momentum and intrigue it started with.

The film uses a documentary style voice-over describing the characters, their motives, and their hidden desires, as if they were a herd of antelope on the Serengeti. It's often distant (quite purposefully) at these times, but the distance allows us to see past their desires. It allows the story to boil it all down into the simple basic drives of these animals, I mean children, I mean people. First and foremost, the film is funny. I laughed out loud more often in this film than in most comedies I've seen this year. Secondly, the film is often unsettling and edges into uncomfortable territory with masturbation and a weasley little man who exposes himself to children as main points in the story. I like this. I like the risks taken, especially because I found some of the suburban characters to be rather obtuse, perhaps even unbelievably simplistic. Although I very much enjoyed the film, at times it felt as if it was degrading toward some of its characters, perhaps stupidly so.

Of those that felt oversimplified, Patrick Wilson's ex-jock who can't pass the bar exam was probably the most egregious case. He's a sweet, simple, good-looking guy that misses the better days of his childhood when he was the quarterback, and he could spend his days having fun. Now he's a stay at home dad, failing the bar exam over and over again. At the local playground he meets up with Kate Winslet's young mother watching her daughter. She's a bookish one-time English literature grad student now stuck in the burbs, not fitting in with the other young mothers. She wants more. They both want more. In the end, of course they get quite a bit more.
An important subplot follows a disturbed man who has been branded a sex-offender by the community (and the police). The film doesn't quite know what to make of this man (of course neither does anybody else ...) It has sympathy for him, but it also clearly shows that he cannot be trusted. What to do with him? Luckily the film isn't dumb enough to try and give us an answer which would undoubtedly be wrong. In the end the man (Jackie Earle Haley) decides to take his problem into his own hands.

I was quite a fan of In The Bedroom, Todd Fields other deceptively simple narration on middle-class America. This film is even more entertaining to watch, however. It times it's funny and fun, creepy and concerning, interesting, shocking or thrilling. At times it feels smart, at others perhaps a bit watered down, but it succeeds so often that the failures can more than be excused. Through all of this Kate Winslet gives the best performance of her career. When watching her in a movie, I usually feel as if I am simply watching Kate Winslet. This time her
character felt new and unique, not Kate Winslet. She was quite good, and I imagine will get an Oscar nomination for her efforts.

Standouts: Kate Winslet shines, and I very much enjoyed Todd Field's script and directing, although ...
Blowouts: ... a few of the characters were perhaps a bit narrowly conceived in that script and direction.

Grade: A-