Little Children (Todd Field, 2006)

[Barmy]

Yes, that probably explains Slant's negative review.

[John Cope]

Another, more encouraging take from the Los Angeles Times:

'Little Children'
Satire and terror are brilliantly blended in Todd Field's "Little Children." It's a suburbia where parents are as unformed as the kids.
By Carina Chocano
Times Staff Writer

October 6, 2006

About halfway through Todd Field's deeply resonant "Little Children," adulterous suburban lovers Sarah and Brad (Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson) indulge in something really naughty: They join in a moment of mass moral panic and righteous ostracism at the community pool. The cheerful chaos has just been obliterated by the discovery that the goggled and flippered town pervert, Ronnie McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley), has slipped into the water among the kids. Sarah spots him first, then awareness sweeps over the crowd like a wave. Parents rush poolside, children scramble out of the water or get plucked out by the armpits, babies start to wail. It's as if the shark from "Jaws" had finally found a way to justify decades of collective primal fear. Wrapping their arms around their kids, Sarah and Brad instinctively join the crowd. They may be guilty, but McGorvey, mercifully for them, is guilty of much worse.

For a nearly wordless sequence, the pervert-in-the-pool scene is astonishingly complex, not to mention brave, and it's indicative of the wicked insight and emotional subtlety at play in Field's lucid and sensitive film. The movie begins as a satire, rolling inexorably forward — like the meatball in the camp song — building steam, mass and weight until it completely obliterates every bogus piety in its path. What's revealed in its wake is an empathetic, humanistic vision that rejects, even in difficult, extreme cases, the mob impulse to demonize.

The story of an illicit love affair that coincides with a presumed pedophile's move to town, "Little Children" is based on a book by Tom Perrotta, who wrote the novel "Election" (Alexander Payne's film was later based on it). Field, whose last film was "In the Bedroom," co-wrote the movie with Perrotta, with whom he obviously shares an interest in hermetic environments and a fascination with what happens when their familiar dynamics are disturbed by outside or deviant forces. But "Little Children" is one of those rare films that transcends its source material. Firmly rooted in the present and in our current frame of mind — a time and frame of mind that few artists have shown interest in really exploring — the movie is one of the few films I can think of that examines the baffling combination of smugness, self-abnegation, ceremonial deference and status anxiety that characterizes middle-class Gen X parenting, and find sheer, white-knuckled terror at its core.

The title is far more inclusive than it seems at first. Sarah and Brad are misfits in their town, where the norm is so rigidly but tacitly enforced that even the slightest deviance raises eyebrows and hackles. The two meet one morning at the playground frequented by a cadre of regimental stay-at-home moms ruled by queen bee Mary Ann (Mary B. McCann). Mary Ann's approach to child-rearing combines a militarism, adherence to protocol and self-satisfaction not seen since "The King and I," and while Sarah tries to conform to the strict rules of snack times and play-dates, she can't manage to subsume herself to the degree required by her cohorts. Her feelings of rebellion and inadequacy are exacerbated by the fact that conformity is couched in a false broad-mindedness and empathy, making it insidious, alienating and cruel.

If Sarah is a threat to the moms' conformity, the mysterious house-husband Brad is a threat to their complacency. Male, beautiful to the point of inciting panic (the ladies call him "the prom king") and apparently unemployed, he's an erotic apparition in the playground, not to mention an apparently discomfiting reminder of a stage in life when sex was its own justification and reward, instead of another task to be scheduled. Sarah, who is unhappily married to a much older man named Richard (Gregg Edelman), a remote and tedious branding consultant with a secret porn fetish, gets through the days pretending to be "an anthropologist studying the behavior of suburban women," not as a suburban woman herself. Her attraction to Brad, therefore, is not only impulsive and romantic, it's intrinsic to her sense of who she is — or was. Among other things, a former PhD candidate in literature. (She never finished her thesis.)

Brad's attraction to Sarah has more to do with what she sees in him than what he sees in her, as well as with her willingness to inhabit a world outside of their reality. She's not as beautiful as his wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), but she demands nothing. While Kathy waits impatiently for Brad to pass the bar (which he's failed twice), Sarah is happy to live with him in the past, clinging to the idea that they are hovering in the pleasant limbo of unrealized potential, cheering madly in the otherwise deserted bleachers at night football games in which a bunch of cops play a bunch of accountants. When he's not taking care of his son, playing football or watching teenagers skateboard at the high school when he's supposed to be studying for the bar, Brad spends evenings riding around town in his new friend Larry Hedges' (Noah Emmerich) van. Larry, who befriends Brad one night during his "rounds," warning the town of McGorvey's presence in their midst, is Mary Ann's male counterpart. A former cop who took early retirement under troubling circumstances, he now dedicates his time to persecuting McGorvey and his mother, May (Phyllis Somerville). Haley and Somerville are remarkable as "mommy" and damaged son, creating a rapport astonishingly layered with disappointment, resignation and wary hope.

"Have you ever thought about the term 'homeland security'? I mean really thought about it?" Larry asks Brad one night. Brad doesn't say, but the question lingers. Security weighs heavily on all the characters, but the more they grasp at it, the more damage they do to themselves and others. May's deep inner strength exists in sharp contrast to Larry's bullying, which masks a bottomless well of self-loathing and fear. Obsessed with "the family," "the community" and, of course, "the children," Larry causes nothing but harm.

It's the same poisonous certitude that causes Mary Ann to take the opportunity, during another memorable scene at a book club, to tell Sarah what she thinks of her by calling the unhappily married and unfaithful fictional character Emma Bovary "selfish" and "a slut." Sarah delivers a defense of the individual versus the crowd that is rousing, moving and all the more touching for the fact that she, like Madame Bovary, is neglecting her child. While Sarah and Brad's standard adulterer's guilt is painfully heightened by the aggressively virtuous cult-of-the-child that stifles their pretty suburban town, the movie's actual kids are not so much characters as they are tiny loci of anxiety, resentment and redirected ambition. In fact, the only child in the story who is loved reciprocally and without reservation is McGorvey. His mother is a firecracker with no illusions about her son and only the most modest expectations, which he will probably not meet. Strangely, she adores him anyway.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Andrew Sarris' review.

[Dylan]

This has been in limited release for seven weeks, but still hasn't exeeded 37 theatres? Doesn't this seem like a film that would be a little more popular than that?

I haven't seen it yet, but with a 37 theatre release I'll bet most people who want to see it haven't.

Does anybody think it will expand, or will we have to wait for the DVD?

[marty]

I think it will expand if and when it gets noms for critics end of year awards and Golden Globes and Oscars. Likely to expand to more screens around Jan/Feb.

[Dylan]

Perhaps, but since the theatrical release was October, I'm kind of doubtful that it won't be disappearing before awards season. But hope springs eternal (for the record, it was one of the very few late 2006 releases I wanted to see that I thought would make it to my town).

[marty]

Perhaps, but since the theatrical release was October, I'm kind of doubtful that it won't be disappearing before awards season. But hope springs eternal.

Wasn't Crash re-released months after it finished at cinemas? I know big things are expected of Little Children come awards time.

[Dylan]

Does this really have a shot at being nominated for Best Picture? Even Crash, Brokeback, Capote, and the rest of the 2005 nominees had wider initial releases than "Little Children," and those films were also the floodgate of critical praise, while the reviews for "Little Children" are about half and half.

[marty]

Hey, I don't really know. I live at the "ass-end-of-the-world" in Melbourne, Australia. I am simply a curious observer of the USA.

[Antoine Doinel]

If they are trying to get Little Children Oscar consideration they certainly haven't given it the big push yet. There are no TV spots or major ad campaigns that I've seen, and in North America it hasn't gone to a wide release yet.

[dadaistnun]

Dave Poland on Little Children's current box office status/screen count

Little Children Soldier(s) On

In its eighth weekend in theaters, New Line's Little Children is still just in 30 theaters. And it grossed more this weekend in 18 of them than it did last weekend. In fact, in those major markets, the gross has consistently grown week after week, as New Line waits to make it a marketed hit and not just a word of mouth success.

Four screens in New York… all up again this weekend, between 16% and 27% apiece.

Los Angeles has three screens with the film… all up. And in Pasadena and Rancho Miguel, the film is up over 50%.

Yes, there is someplace where the film is not gangbusters. Montreal. The film is running out of steam with the Quebecoise.

But Little Children remains the only non-IMAX movie this year that has grossed over $1.5 million without ever appearing on more than 40 screens.

There is an increasing sense out there that Little Children is about to make a significant comeback, both at the box office and with critics groups that will appreciate it as an underdog. Time and New Line will tell.

[filmnoir1]

I saw this film earlier in the week. It is a powerful film that at first glance seems to harken back to American Beauty and a dissection of American bourgeois values. Yet, this is simply a structuring device that enables Field focus in on the crisis of femininity and masculinity for the two main characters.
Winslet is a bored housewife who holds a master's degree in English literature. In an inspired moment in the film we learn that when she marries her husband Richard whose job is to brand people (sell gross commercialism) she is forced into moving into his family home, which resemebles Old Williamsburg in Virginia. She reluctantly decides to leave the house alone, but does transform one room within the house for her own private sanctuary. One can not help but think of Virginia Woolf and her landmark essay arguing that the only way a woman may find creative freedom is to have a "room of one's own" Her performance is quite brave. She is made to look dowdy in this film, which is still I believe a stretch for her. Yet, there is a sadness in her eyes as she embodies the character of Sarah, that I have not seen since she was in Jude.
Patrick Wilson plays a stay at home dad whom the witches of the playground call the "Prom King" He is a man who has finished law school but cannot overcome the fear of the bar exam. Rather, he spends his evenings when he is supposed to be studying daydreaming about when he played football and life was carefree.
The third figure in this incredibly powerful story is that of Ronnie who is a sex offender that has been released from prison. All the people of the town fear him and argue that he should be castrated. Field does a nice job of showing the softer side of Ronnie before using a brillantly executed scene to show that this is a troubled man. The scene in question is when he goes to the city pool. Without anyone noticing he jumps in the pool and Field shoots the scene from his perspective underwater, forcing the viewer to adopt Ronnie's view of the world which is interested in looking at kids in a frightening fashion.
The final thing I would note is that the cinematography is breathtaking, especially the outdoor sequences when we see images of the storm clouds and the church bell tower. Field captures the spirit and look of New England in a way that has not been done since his last film.

[Galen Young]

Wow, that narration track really kills the mood, the build-up, the everything... Christ, every time "the voice" came on I laughed out loud. It eradicated any chance to inject the piece with a much needed shot of ambiguity -- why did we have to be told what the characters were thinking? I enjoyed the performances, the look, the humor --

Spoiler

I didn't buy that scene with the guy joining the skateboarders at the end one fucking bit! Everything crashed to a halt for me after that...

but mostly I was pretty shocked at the Hollywood Ending, everything tied up so nice and neat. Is the novel the same way? Drop the narration track (ala Blade Runner), and if the ending had been more ambiguous it might have been something to write home to Stanley about.

[domino harvey]

I've read the novel but not seen the movie. As far as I can remember, the book ends with

Spoiler

the wife's husband leaving her for a porn star, the wife waits for her lover in the park, but he never shows because he reclaims his youth via skateboarding and gets hurt. While she waits, the sex offender approaches her and my memory is fairly hazy here but he gets arrested and the wife and the lover don't end up together.

Not a very good book.

[John Cope]

I liked the book very much, up until the awful ending. It trashes the insight into the characters Perrotta had established in favor of a supposedly mature resolution. But the ending denies everything we have been made to understand about these people through Perrotta's deft prose. There is such truth in that book that it's dispiriting for the accomplishment to be sunk by the insistent and misguided pseudo-wisdom of a "realistic" conclusion.

I had read that Field had altered this ending and that gave me hope. If he has not, that is a great disappointment.

[Matt]

I had read that Field had altered this ending and that gave me hope. If he has not, that is a great disappointment.

The ending is altered slightly, but only to make it worse.

[domino harvey]

the book was ruined the moment

Spoiler

the sex offender guy was introduced and it turned out he was indeed a sex offender and not someone who got a raw deal.

does all that garbage make it into the film?

[Matt]

does all that garbage make it into the film?

Yes.

[Barmy]

Yeah, if you want insight into the human condition, you're better off going to see Hugh Jackman float around in a bubble.

[portnoy]

The Fountain's just as terrible as Little Children is.

[Mr Sausage]

I think we've found our first two candidates for the Official Idiot Poster Thread. I'm ecstatic.

[Highway 61]

Um, I guess I make three since I thought this film's treatment of suburban ennui barely achieved a sub-Desperate Housewives level.

[portnoy]

I already posted my five lines about this movie on page one. But to add a few more:

A friend of mine posits that I misread the film - that it's not about suburban hypocrisy and the decay of the middle class soul (puke puke puke), and that all of its Flintstonian ruminations on suburbia are secondary to its titular obsession - it's a film about how all these characters are behaving like high schoolers - going to English class (the embarrassing Madame Bovary scene), having football games, and generally refusing to grow up - their problem is not one endemic to their location but to their inability to accept the responsibilities of adulthood.

Really, if this is the claim the film is making, I think I hate it even more - the inherent equation here of youth with moral or social maladjustment is offensive and banal - what kind of cynical humorless pedant could earnestly make that his theme?



"I've put childhood behind me. *sniff*"

[Artois]

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and the Cannes jury? I also disagree on the behaving high schoolers part, english class and football games are incidental, rather they're thinking like children.

Setting aside the tone, I generally agreed with the content of the Slant review, but I thought Little Children was a solid film; it wasn't aimed at those who can appreciate the subtlely of a Bresson film, it was aimed at mainstream level and in that respect I think it was a huge success, those I've talked to who've seen the film thought it was really good.

Bearing in mind the audience it was going for and the film it was trying to be, I also thought the narration was spot on, just enough to set a light-hearted playful tone before things got a little heavier, although to start with I was worried it was going to continue to appear throughout the film. For me, the cheesey ending was also saved by being undermined by the '..and they happily ever after' narration, once again highlighting the fairytale nature of the film.

And for a film that avoids making you feel uncomfortable despite the kind of content its showing, a downbeat ending would have been out of place. Even for message films the average person takes the sensation away with them first and foremost before even being able to think about any content of the film.

I think it's a shame this was given such a limited release, because in my opinion it is pitched at or near the perfect level between commercial success and content.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight and thought it was fantastic. What makes this film work on a level that American Beauty and similar films miss entirely, is that it dials down the histrionics. It wonderfully captures the awkwardness, fear, ambivalence, selfishness and boredom of its characters through their actions and guarded conversations. I was initially hesitant about the narrator, but became comfortable with it and loved the humorous jabs it took at the characters.

If there was one thing I take issue with the film is the ending. I wished that it had been as cynical about suburban life as the rest of the film and it probably would've been far more realistic. Anyway, it would've been the logical conclusion for characters who spend the entirety of the film trapped in their adolescent fantasies while neglecting their adult responsibilities. That summation of the theme sounds painfully immature, but Todd Field's ability to maintain an uncertain, disarming tone throughout the film and keep it from delving into dish smashing yelling matches is to be applauded.

A mature, satisfying picture.