Dir.
Todd Field, US, 2006, 130 mins
Cast: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie
Earle Hale, Noah Emmerich
Review by Dave Hall
Little Children is a satirical suburban
melodrama that despite a surface sheen and occasional flashes
of brilliance, finally adds up to less than the sum of its
parts. Adapted
by director Todd Field and Tom Perrotta from Perrotta’s
novel, the film centres on two self-obsessed thirtysomethings:
Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson),
both alienated from their respective spouses, both feeling
trapped by their suffocating lives. They meet at the local
playground (in the company of their little children), flirt
at an outdoor swimming pool and embark on a passionate affair
in the more functional rooms of their gorgeous homes. Meanwhile,
recently-released sex offender Ronald James McGorvey (Jackie
Earle Haley) has returned to the neighbourhood to live with
his mother May (Phyllis Whitmore), and quickly becomes the
target of the community’s considerable fear and loathing,
personified by disgraced ex-cop Larry Hedges (Noah Emmerich).
This all takes place in the over-stylised
suburbia familiar from American Beauty and TVs Desperate
Housewives, either a recommendation or a warning depending
on your taste. The film’s intent is to unpeel the
surface calm of its leafy, affluent neighbourhood and reveal
the hypocrisy and secret desires that lurk beneath. But
the satire is undermined by the film’s uneven tone,
seemingly the result of tension between the sensibilities
of the two co-writers. And whilst Winslet and Wilson work
hard to give depth to their basically unsympathetic characters,
they too are undone by a bland and repetitive story arc.
Field’s slow burn debut In the
Bedroom examined much the same world, but with a far more
detached eye; in Little Children, too much is made explicit.
A syrupy, irony-laden voiceover randomly ladles on chunks
of intrusive exposition and psychological insight, suggesting
that the writers lost faith in the ability of the film
to speak for itself. And the shoehorning in of a book group
scene so that Sarah can discuss Madame Bovary feels like
an attempt to take a short cut to significance by name-dropping
a Great Work of Literature.
When the clatter made by the kitchen sink
being thrown in dies down, however, there are passages which
show that Field still has the mesmerising ability to capture
the essence of a mood or emotion with seemingly a minimum
of effort. In one scene, Sarah returns from an illicit night
away with Brad, and the babysitter’s
ambivalent greeting is an exhilaratingly uncomfortable watch.
There are similar moments scattered throughout. And Field
draws an extraordinary performance from Haley as sex offender
and social pariah Ronnie; under siege in his own home (and,
as it turns out, in his own mind), he is by turns monstrous,
creepy, touching and pathetic, sometimes all in the same
scene. Even Winslet forgoes her trademark nostril-flaring
and eye-swivelling to create a believably flawed character
who sustains interest to the end.
But despite moments that stay with
you for days after, there’s
no real cumulative effect or resonance to the film. And,
as with In the Bedroom, Field fluffs the climax, ratcheting
up the drama for a contrived “shock” ending
that rings emotionally hollow.
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