Little Children [DVD]

The way director Todd Field handles human sexuality in this movie reminds me a bit of the way Todd Solondz handled it in Happiness (1998). There are the same starkly realistic depictions of a variety of human desires, lusts and cravings with perhaps an emphasis on what devotees of the missionary position might call "perversions." Although not quite as wild as Solondz's film, Little Children is equally challenging to politically correct notions of sexuality.

Kate Winslet stars as Sarah Pierce, a suburban mom who has a Master's in English lit and a husband who finds sex in cyber space more satisfying than sex with her. She joins (at a slight distance) some other more conventional suburban moms at the local playground where they sit around and talk while watching their children play. One of the things the women talk about is Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), who is a handsome stay at home dad who has twice fluked the bar exam. He takes care of his son while his high powered wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is busy bringing home the bacon. The women don't talk to him. They watch him warily but with keen interest and call him "the prom king." When Sarah catches her husband having sex with his computer (so to speak) she resolves to gain the Prom King for herself, partly out of sheer romantic lust and partly out of revenge.

While we watch the adulterous union unfold, we are given some perspective in the form of Ronnie J. McGorvey (played with appropriate creepiness by Jackie Earle Haley) who has just been released from prison after serving a term for exposing himself to children. A side complication arrives in the form of Larry Hedges (Noah Emmerich), who is a "retired" cop with a temper management problem and a tendency to find objects of hate onto which to direct his anger. Ronnie the pervert becomes his target.

All this seems...well, unremarkable and even tiresome except for the fact that everybody in the movie is flawed in some very serious and interesting way, and director Field's interpretation of the characters comes down resolutely on the side of the nonconventional. In some respects what Field and Tom Perrotta, who wrote the novel from which he and Field adapted the screenplay, are saying is that the characters are all little children (hence the title). And not only that, but we're all a bit perverse. It just depends on your point of view. Sarah's parenting skills are less than optimal and it's obvious that she is bored with being a stay at home mom. Her "perversion" is similar to Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary in that she wants more out of life than being a wife and mother. She wants, as she explains to the woman's book club, what Madame Bovary wanted, to satisfy "the hunger - the hunger for an alternative and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness."

Brad wants to remain a child, being taken care of by his wife, while he pretends to study for the bar exam but instead plays touch football and watches the boys at the skateboard park as though a boy himself, or allows himself to be seduced by Sarah.

Ronnie wants to have sex with little girls, and Sarah's husband wants to have sex with a porn star--or perhaps they just want to masturbate to fantasies of same...and so on.

What makes this an excellent movie is first of all Kate Winslet who continues to prove she can play a wide variety of characters and get into their skin and become them as she has done in so many films. She brings the nuances of Sarah Pierce's character, her strengths and weaknesses, to life in a vivid and compelling way that forces us to identify with her, much the same way we identify with Madame Bovary.

Also first rate is the unflinching way human sexuality is presented and the refusal to accept conventionality that is the heart of this story. I think that directors Todd Field and Todd Solondz may be working in a new genre for the 21st century that might be called "sexual realism." Perhaps it is just a coincidence but both directors had Jane Adams play a kind of forlorn wallflower at the game of life in both movies. Perhaps she symbolizes in some strange way the confused, frustrated and deeply masked phenomenon that is human sexuality.

The real essence of the film is contained in the scene in which Ronnie enters the pool with all the children playing in it and the moms in the lounge chairs watching. Suddenly Sarah becomes aware that Ronnie the pervert is in the pool and then all the other moms become aware. There is a mass hysteria and a mass exit from the pool by the children. The moms are horrified and are desperate to know, "Did he touch you?" Ronnie is seen as some kind of bug-like creature who somehow will bring a contagion upon them through his touch. The point here and indeed throughout the film (and also in Solondz's film) is that we overreact to sex that offends us. We find the touch of a creepy pedophile worse than some kind of physical violence.

This is a thesis that will not find acceptance in America for many years to come if ever because sexual perversity is more threatening to most Americans than extreme violence. Why this should be so is not really a mystery. But to explain it here is beyond the scope of this review, and anyway explaining it would hardly change it. However the fact that Field and Solandz are bringing it to our attention is something new and is perhaps the beginning of a challenge to conventional morality.

This isn't a bad film at all - in fact it has moments of genius. But ultimately Little Children yearns to be something it isn't. The source novel by Tom Perrotta is great in a breezy, colloquial way, with occasional moments of real insight that strike home all the harder for being less expected. Todd Field's cinematic take on it, however, has pretensions all of its own. Once in a while I'll watch a film that could really use a voice-over (The Handmaid's Tale for instance) because there's simply no other way of getting across the true beauty or the impact of the original novel. But in the case of Little Children the booming narrator is basically just an affectation. Something to give it an artier edge, maybe, a quirkiness or a gravitas that Field thought the film might otherwise be lacking? Gimmicks like these are a popular technique when the story alone isn't quite cohesive enough. Whereas the novel segues smoothly from inside the mind of one character to another this is less well achieved on screen, and it does seem bitty occasionally. Not to mention long-winded. The film really plods sometimes, whereas the novel moves at a cracking pace for the most part. And Todd Field is the DH Lawrence of the film world - a man without a humorous bone in his body. Little Children has 'take me seriously' emblazoned across it in neon sky-high letters. Yawn.

As for the cast, Patrick Wilson is kind of good as the bewildered-looking former jock led astray by boredom and testosterone. Kate Winslet is the one everyone raves about, but there's something annoyingly mannered about her performance, including that smooth American drawl perfected to within an inch of its life. She definitely looks less ravishing than usual, but physically she and Wilson aren't quite as mismatched as they're meant to be. Jennifer Connelly's perfectly fine as documentary-maker Kathy, but she must have been twiddling her thumbs a lot on set. Her wafer-thin role mostly involves demonstrating how much longer her legs are than Kate Winslet's.

The film comes alive in its less comfortable moments, nothing to do with the starrier cast members at all. Another plot follows convicted paedophile Ronnie McGorvey, released into an increasingly hostile community and hounded by the slightly-unhinged Larry, himself a defrocked cop. A scene at the town pool is so skillfully handled that your major feeling for McGorvey is sympathy, while a shocking episode involving a blind date turns everything on its head again. It's a complex portrayal, and brilliantly acted, although Field suddenly goes for the jugular with a melodramatic ending (not in the book) that smacks of shock tactics. The fate of the other characters gets sewn up in an equally unrealistic way. Hence the three stars, when it should really have been four.

I have to say that while in some ways it was a disturbing story; it was also very touching in a lot of ways. The first thing one will notice about the film will be the mood set via the lighting, and then of course the narrator Will Lyman, who is often used in documentaries but at times can be annoying. As a viewer you are immediately drawn into this storybook like atmosphere in a non-traditional storybook sort of setting and the quirkiness and underlying humor keeps you hooked.

I also felt these actors had such depth and character, either you could relate or want to speak too and have some sort of relationship with. "Little Children" overflows with meaningful lives. You will come to fine out everyone struggles in this slice of modern suburbia. Sarah (Kate Winslett) is a housewife and a mother who has lost a little something in her life, passion, while her husband (Gregg Edelman) is messing around on the internet; she meets the "prom king" of the block, Brad, and has a deep passionate affair with him. But there is a problem, Brad (Patrick Wilson) is also married with a child as well, but their affair and love is too strong to ignore when they realize that they are what were missing in each other's lives, or are they just a fantasy they needed to fulfill? There is another character in this film named Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), who had a horrible reputation after exposing himself to a minor and is snubbed by the committee, but the only love of his life is his mother (incredibly talented Phyllis Somerville) who is constantly trying to get an ex cop harasser (Noah Emmerich) off her son's back.

This film had some terrific performances; I was completely convinced by everyone, particularly Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson, who made a wonderful couple. The support cast, though great, didn't have a lot to work with, particularly Jennifer Connelly, as Brads wife, who did well with what she had. The children were effective and very cute. I was also very impressed by the brave perspective director Todd Field took towards sexual deviants who have served their time, showing that they are unduly victimized for almost the rest of their existence. In fact, the storyline between Ronnie and Larry, and the small offshoots, were the best part of the film, and very well done.

"Little Children" is an incredibly touching film; the ending was so beautiful and really brought true closure to the story. This is one of the best films that came out that year, I would highly recommend it.