Review

Review Date: 26-November-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Little Children (2006)

The last time we heard from writer/director Todd Field he was being feted for 2001's In the Bedroom and I was on the verge of retching. That movie was a fetid pile of misogynistic doo-doo which somehow caught the eye of highbrow moviegoers and Hollywood types who wanted to appear artistic. Field's new movie Little Children is another small-town melodrama that's equally disturbing but fortunately less offensive. That it's not lighting the same fires as In the Bedroom is probably because it's demanding and twisted and strange.

The title of the picture refers to the actual children in our midst as well as the adults who warp them by behaving immaturely. The setting is a wealthy neighborhood in Massachusetts where Sarah (Kate Winslet) struggles with her occupation as a full-time suburban mother. The women of her class and station (or of her husband's, in whose ancestral home she now lives) are shallow gossips whom she despises as they sit in the park clucking over their brood. Her husband is both a drip and an enthusiast of on-line porn, which is one of several questionable contrivances of the plot (how did he ever hook Sarah?). She needs a means of escape and finds it in Brad (Patrick Wilson), another dissatisfied, stay-at-home parent chafing at his own irrelevance. His beautiful wife (Jennifer Connolly) treats him with a hint of condescension for his inability to pass the bar exam and become a bread-winning grown-up. The film dissects Sarah and Brad's affair and how it contributes to their search for meaning, and therefore their fitness as spouses, parents, and members of society.

For an unusual perspective, the well-heeled, attractive characters of the adultery tale are contrasted with a sex offender named Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley) who has just finished serving time for exposing himself to a minor. Ronnie is an easy target for the self-righteous indignation of the suburban horde, but Field presents the viewer with the uncomfortable necessity of regarding him as both a victim and a monster. Much of the sympathy for Ronnie is generated by an ex-cop (Noah Emmerich) who harasses him as a personal crusade, and the courageous devotion of his aged mom (Phyllis Somerville) who might have put the "mother" in "smothering." The movie questions how everybody can condemn his behavior so zealously without realizing that their own actions may imperil children as well.

In addition to its grim topics, Little Children is brought down by awkwardly applied narration and the aforementioned contrivances (here's another: who would stop in the act of seizing a new life to try skateboarding?). Yet I grew attuned to it, perhaps because of the fragility of the characters or the depth they are given by the actors. Little Children suggests that adults would do well to stop and look at themselves in a big-picture way. It doesn't do so with eloquence, but the impact is hard to ignore.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.