‘Little Children’ is Todd Field’s follow-up to his debut film ‘In The Bedroom’, a literary adaptation of a best-selling 2004 novel by Tom Perrotta, who also collaborated on the screenplay. It features great performances by Kate Winslet, the photogenic Patrick Wilson (from Hardcandy) Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville, Jennifer Connelly and others.
Perrotta and Field were apparently able to preserve the novel’s tone, which seems to fluctuate between slightly satirical, ironical and generous sympathy (would be interesting to read the book now after having seen the film). “Little Children” is a sharp, intelligent and somehow cynical view of American suburban life. Most of the characters are weak or flawed or screwed up, yet quite realistically portrayed. As David Denby has written in The NewYorker, “Field has grown in ambition, but he still works on an intimate scale. He surrounds his characters with an intense stillness, and then slowly introduces the ungovernable into their lives.” Maybe that's why the portuguese title is... "Pecados íntimos" (intimate sins).
But is 'Little Children', “at its heart, a story about the way we judge others, the way others judge us, and the way we judge ourselves”, as Kim Voynar wrote in her review, or is it “more than a moral fable about the traps we set for ourselves by not growing up. Field performs a high-wire act that balances hard truth and hard-won tenderness” as Peter Travers wrote in The Rolling stone? Or does the movie take itself too seriously, and as Jeff Vyce claims “Filmmaker Todd Field seems to have completely missed the point of his source material, Tom Perrotta's tale of suburban angst, longing and temptation, which is at least slightly a parody. Field's adaptation is dour to the point of being completely humorless.” ? Is this finally a film about being afraid and refusing to grow up and not being able to face our choices in life, not wanting to take decisions?
Perrotta and Field were apparently able to preserve the novel’s tone, which seems to fluctuate between slightly satirical, ironical and generous sympathy (would be interesting to read the book now after having seen the film). “Little Children” is a sharp, intelligent and somehow cynical view of American suburban life. Most of the characters are weak or flawed or screwed up, yet quite realistically portrayed. As David Denby has written in The NewYorker, “Field has grown in ambition, but he still works on an intimate scale. He surrounds his characters with an intense stillness, and then slowly introduces the ungovernable into their lives.” Maybe that's why the portuguese title is... "Pecados íntimos" (intimate sins).
But is 'Little Children', “at its heart, a story about the way we judge others, the way others judge us, and the way we judge ourselves”, as Kim Voynar wrote in her review, or is it “more than a moral fable about the traps we set for ourselves by not growing up. Field performs a high-wire act that balances hard truth and hard-won tenderness” as Peter Travers wrote in The Rolling stone? Or does the movie take itself too seriously, and as Jeff Vyce claims “Filmmaker Todd Field seems to have completely missed the point of his source material, Tom Perrotta's tale of suburban angst, longing and temptation, which is at least slightly a parody. Field's adaptation is dour to the point of being completely humorless.” ? Is this finally a film about being afraid and refusing to grow up and not being able to face our choices in life, not wanting to take decisions?
As Kate Winslet says in the film, "it is the hunger for an alternative and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness".
'Little children' is probably all this yet much more… Perrotta and Field may even have created a metaphor of life under terrorism, where Ronnie (the excellent Jackie Earle Haley, nominated for best supporting role in the Oscars), a convicted sex offender freshly out of prison, has the 'role' of the “terrorist”.
All in all this is a challenging, unsettling film, which is likely to remain in our heads for a while. There is a bit of everything, from perversion to pedophilia to ordinary unhappiness, sexual indifference, boredom, adultery, nearly explicit sex and direct explicit language, internet porn obsession, semi-psychotic behaviour. Almost everyone has a flaw and some sort of secret, except the children maybe. But it’s the adults who behave like children instead...
The actors are magnificently directed by Field, the film sets off in a crescendo. It is probably more interesting to watch the beginning with tension rising, when the main characters contemplate adultery, rather than when they dive into it. And at the end the film loses some force and gets a bit lost, when it focuses more in the character of Ronald (the 'pervert') and his fate, in particular when his ‘enemy’ gets pitiful about his loss of his mother… yet the film always remains somehow unconventional, 'serious' and 'fresh', not a classical way of filming , detached enough from the story it is telling and its characters (helped by a narrator voice), and even music is not used to bring out the easy teardrops… certainly one of the most interesting films I've seen recently, even if it has its flaws.
It reminds a bit of ‘American Beauty’ (yet less witty), less malicious as Todd Solondz’s ‘Happiness’ nor as weird as Miranda July’s ‘Me and you and everyone we know’. And maybe Kate Winslet gets her (well deserved) Oscar.
All in all this is a challenging, unsettling film, which is likely to remain in our heads for a while. There is a bit of everything, from perversion to pedophilia to ordinary unhappiness, sexual indifference, boredom, adultery, nearly explicit sex and direct explicit language, internet porn obsession, semi-psychotic behaviour. Almost everyone has a flaw and some sort of secret, except the children maybe. But it’s the adults who behave like children instead...
The actors are magnificently directed by Field, the film sets off in a crescendo. It is probably more interesting to watch the beginning with tension rising, when the main characters contemplate adultery, rather than when they dive into it. And at the end the film loses some force and gets a bit lost, when it focuses more in the character of Ronald (the 'pervert') and his fate, in particular when his ‘enemy’ gets pitiful about his loss of his mother… yet the film always remains somehow unconventional, 'serious' and 'fresh', not a classical way of filming , detached enough from the story it is telling and its characters (helped by a narrator voice), and even music is not used to bring out the easy teardrops… certainly one of the most interesting films I've seen recently, even if it has its flaws.
It reminds a bit of ‘American Beauty’ (yet less witty), less malicious as Todd Solondz’s ‘Happiness’ nor as weird as Miranda July’s ‘Me and you and everyone we know’. And maybe Kate Winslet gets her (well deserved) Oscar.
****/5
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