Little Children
One of the great gifts of the cinema is that of a fearless assessment of human motivations. Great films can cause us to wonder about civilization, about the constructs of our genus and about why we build the lives we build. In 2006, Little Children was tasked with this notion. Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, Todd Field’s movie pitilessly examines the shadowy slivers of suburbia.
In many ways, Little Children is a piece of satire. Its target is yuppie routine: that of affairs and gossip. To further his point, Field has included a narrator (Will Lyman). Little Children shares a considerable amount of thematic content with American Beauty and similar films. There is the view of perversity, for instance, lurking beneath the white picket fence exterior. There is the “wrong” relationship. And there is the “right” relationship.
Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) is a disinclined homemaker floating coldly through life in an upper-middle class neighbourhood in Boston. She is a former feminist and academic, but she has settled for a rather dull existence and ostensibly succumbed to the romanticism that normalcy brings. Sarah feels as though she has no purpose and views her daughter, Lucy (Sadie Goldstein), as an “unknowable little person.” Lucy is a suburban ornament, crated around to parks and pools in an effort to join the amorphous pack.
Sarah’s relationship with her husband, Richard (Gregg Edelman), is odd. They rarely communicate. He has taken to masturbating to an online porn site with panties on his head. Empty and unhappy as her life is, Sarah becomes durable through the vitality of the little victories. She smiles after making witty remarks to the Stepford-esque wives in the park. She gets a charge out of asking for a hug from the cute stay-at-home dad, Brad (Patrick Wilson).
Brad is the talk of the suburbs because of his emasculated function. His wife (Jennifer Connelly) is a documentary filmmaker. Upon meeting Sarah, Brad also discovers a “charge” and the two become playful. The flirtation accelerates with the unremitting strain of time and soon the two are engaged in a fiery affair.
Also in the mix is Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), a sex offender. He lives with his mother (Phillis Somerville). Larry (Noah Emmerich), a former cop, has made it his mission to ensure that Ronnie’s stay in the neighbourhood is less than cosy. He pesters him regularly, displacing his own failings on the sex offender.
How these stories entwine and why they have value in relation to one another is something I’ll leave to the viewer. Every character matters in Field’s grand motion picture and each one is so deftly drawn as to be appalling and wholly significant all at once. To be sure, the little children of which the title speaks are not the accessories these people lug from place to place. Instead, the immaturity and illogicality lies with the “adults.”
The performances are impeccable, led by the greatest single actress of our generation in Kate Winslet. Her ability to transform herself into the normalcy of suburbia is awe-inspiring. As she pushes her daughter on the swings in mandatory “mom” overalls, for instance, Winslet purely lives the part. The other players are also fantastic, especially Haley. I have not had the pleasure of seeing him before (that I recall) and I assure you he is an absolute delight.
Little Children is a tremendous motion picture, sparkling with piercing satire and sweltering sexuality. There are freaks of some sort behind every door in this suburban hellhole and Field’s summons to this outlandish earth should be accepted cheerfully by anyone interested in modern cinema at its finest.
Trailer:
