Little Children is a somewhat misleading name for a movie that doesn’t have much to do with children or anyone physically small. While a couple of kids are in this movie, they are non-descript and serve as props more than anything else. The leads are all middle-aged adults, though their undisciplined and erratic behavior suggests they are anything but. The protagonists act as entitled brats, while the antagonists are fundamentally flawed. It becomes apparent that we are on a collision course between all involved in a film whose setting is present-day New England, but that very well could be in any town in America.
Sarah (Kate Winslet – The Reader, Revolutionary Road) is a stay-at-home mom living a mostly spiritless life in a typical upper-middle-class community. Sarah and her mom’s friends spend weekdays at the local pool, regularly gossiping about their neighbors and occasionally paying attention to their young children. When the attractive Brad (Patrick Wilson – Insidious, Lakeview Terrace) moves into the neighborhood, he turns the heads of all the lonely and bored females, who immediately nickname him the “Prom King.”
Director Todd Field’s second directorial effort (In the Bedroom) is an in-depth character study of a story that could have been commonplace without the correct narrative, pacing, score, and actors. Fortunately for him and us, almost all of the correct decisions were made for a film that is less about an affair and its consequences than it is about an entire community that is oblivious to this affair and probably could care less one way or the other. While Field is patient with his storytelling, he doesn’t hesitate to introduce us to his leads and tell us what will come. Within minutes of their first encounter, Sarah convinces Brad to kiss her so that she can win a bet and shock her other mom friends, who are watching from their chaise lounges at the far side of the public pool. Brad only takes a little convincing. To many, this scene may seem unrealistic and disturbing. However, it shows us quickly what a backstory might have taken fifteen minutes to tell. Sarah and Brad feel invincible against any potential consequences of their actions or that they don’t care about their current marriages enough even to resist the temptation.
Accomplished academically, Sarah and Brad have yet to do much vocationally since graduating. Sarah is an aspiring writer with a master’s degree in literature. She seems more interested in the literary characters discussed at her weekly book club than her three-year-old daughter, Lucy, or her husband, Richard (Gregg Edelman). Their marriage is a sham, and they both know it. We don’t learn much about Richard other than he is interested in internet pornography, with a weird fetish that repulses Sarah. She doesn’t challenge him on it, though. This a loveless relationship. At best, Sarah is going through the motions of living a meaningless life she could have never envisioned. She is interested in her husband, her daughter, or much of anything else in her life. She’s looking for an escape.
Brad, likewise, is fumbling through middle age. He has been unsuccessfully trying to pass the bar exam for quite some time. He spends his days as the primary caregiver for his three-year-old son, Aaron. His beautiful wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly – A Beautiful Mind, Reservation Road) is the family breadwinner, earning her living as a cunning documentary filmmaker. She’s not precisely affectionate with Brad or Aaron and makes them both secondary and submissive to her career. Professionally, Kathy is an extraordinarily assertive and successful filmmaker and cannot understand how at least some of her drive hasn’t rubbed off on her husband, who seems indifferent about really trying to pass the difficult bar exam. A gorgeous couple and well-off financially, they seem like the perfect family. Sarah and Brad’s main difference is Sarah has known she has been depressed for years while Brad is at the infancy stage of really coming to terms with it.
Sarah and Brad are soon wrapped up in a torrid love affair that seems oblivious to everyone in the community. While not physical with each other publically, they are now spending entire days together at the pool, that is, when they aren’t behind closed doors, engaged in vigorous, unadulterated sex in all rooms of each other’s homes while their children nap. Their passion for one another exudes to the point where they decide that they are planning to leave their spouses (literally in the dead of night) and run off with one another to start something new. There is a sense in each of them that an attempt to escape their current lives can somehow ensure that the one they will be together with will be what each has been yearning for their whole lives. The problem with that, which is the fault of Fields more than anyone else, but also the screenplay and the casting, is that we, through Winslet’s portrayal of Sarah, firmly believe that she is miserable and will do whatever she can to escape it. It seems like fleeing with Brady (with Lucy) and letting the chips fall where they may be her best chance for happiness.
With Brad, however, it seems like he loves the sex with Sarah, and maybe he loves her, but not to the point where he’s ready to leave his wife and abandon his son. There’s a line of dialogue in this movie that almost destroys it. During some pillow talk, Sarah talked about Kathy and mentioned how beautiful Brad’s wife is. Brad could have replied to this in several ways but chooses to say, “Beauty is overrated.” This would wreck the self-confidence of most people, especially after an intense roll in the hay. It also implies that Sarah isn’t as attractive as Kathy, and you could go as far as saying that Brad is saying that Sarah isn’t attractive. There are two problems with this. The first is that Winslet is a beautiful woman, and it would take a lot of time in the makeup chair to make her not so. The second is that a highly handsome man like Brad would lower his standards to be with anyone less attractive than him. Inherently, Brad isn’t a bad guy, but he’s only been with physically attractive women as a former college football quarterback. This line was nonsensical and almost sabotaged the entire credibility of the movie. I was so invested in the story by this point that I could move past this line, though it never left my thoughts.
There is a second storyline in this movie that I’ll briefly mention. It doesn’t have much to do with the Sarah and Brad story. It seems to purposefully downplay how an affair might seem like the end of the world to those involved, but in the grand scheme of things, no one outside of those couples/families even seems to care, other than it being another item of gossip. An affair doesn’t disrupt a community like many other events can. More disruptive to a community would be our secondary storyline involving a recently released middle-aged sex offender named Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley – Shutter Island, The Bad News Bears), who has been released from prison. Ronnie was convicted of exposing himself to little girls, served his time, and is back in the same community he was living in before, now in his mother May’s (Phillis Somerville) home. May seems to be the one person who sees Ronnie as redeemable and lovable. This starkly contrasts Larry (Noah Emmerich – F/X’s The Americans, The Truman Show). Larry is an ex-cop with an attitude who becomes obsessed with destroying Ronnie’s life.
While there are little children in this movie, the tiny humans are not what the title implies. Little Children is about adults who act like little children by engaging in self-indulgences, bullying, disregard for others, believing in their sense of self-entitlement, and drinking their own kool-aid that their way is the best, regardless of how it affects others.
Plot 8/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 9/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9.5/10
89%
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