Little Children
Review by Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 10/06/2006
 1 of 5
Ever wonder why moths flutter around bright lights at night and ask yourself, "Don't they know that they'll burn themselves up?"
And yet, so many of us play out the same sad drama. Restless with longing, we respond to dangerous temptations and indulge misguided passions. And then we—and sometimes our families—pay for it.
This metaphor comes to vivid life in Todd Field's riveting new film Little Children. Working from a screenplay that he and Tom Perrota adapted from Perrota's novel, Field paints a deeply disturbing picture of a cozy New England neighborhood in which everyone is pursuing happiness in misguided ways.
In fact, the movie will be too disturbing for some, because it is unflinchingly truthful about sins such as lust, sexual infidelity, and pedophilia. And while Perrota's story is profoundly moral, Field brings it to life in illustrations so explicit that some viewers may be led into temptation themselves.
This is Todd Field's second film about the reckless pursuit of satisfaction. The first, In the Bedroom (2001), reminded us that our desire to judge and punish evildoers can easily lead us into evils of our own. Similarly, Little Children shows what can happen when we respond to disappointment and longing with childish recklessness.
Kate Winslet as Sarah, and Sadie Goldstein as her daughter Lucy
But Little Children is more ambitious. Field skillfully weaves wry humor, absorbing drama, and nerve-wracking suspense in a style that reflects the influence of Stanley Kubrick. (Field had a small role in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, another film in which lustful fantasies have a corrosive effect upon a marriage.)
It took some kind of mad genius to cast Will Lymon, the voice of PBS's "Frontline" documentaries, as the film's narrator. Lymon describes these relational catastrophes with a clinical matter-of-factness, the way a doctor might lecture about cancer. And while big screen narration usually ends up insulting viewer intelligence, in this movie it serves as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that those of us who behave like terrible toddlers sometimes need even the simplest things explained to us.
The story he tells goes like this:
Trying to be a good mother, Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) frequently takes her daughter Lucy to their suburban neighborhood park. Sarah dropped out of graduate school to raise Lucy, and motherhood doesn't come as naturally to her as it does to the three uber-moms she encounters at the park.
As catty and cruel as schoolgirls, those judgmental women make it painfully clear to Sarah that she doesn't live up to their standards of conformity. They're obsessed with perfecting their willful offspring. "All they want is sugar," sighs one. "Constantly."
But they have their own unhealthy desires. All three women betray marital dissatisfaction by gazing dreamily at "the prom king." That's what they call Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), the muscular, handsome young father who brings his son Aaron to the park.
Sarah and the catty, cruel 'uber-moms' at the park
But Brad has problems of his own. Working as a househusband while he studies to pass the bar exam, Brad struggles with embarrassment while his wife, a brunette bombshell named Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), is off making PBS documentaries. Intimidated by her professional success, and longing for the freedom of childhood, Brad spends hours watching young skateboarders, drawn to the glow of their freedom and energy. And when he's invited to join a community football league, he pursues his dream of quarterback glory. "Trying new things made him feel alive," says the narrator.
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