Little Children
Little Children, Todd Field's adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel (with help from the novelist), steeps its tale of suburbia in a dream-like calm. What might at first appear to be straightforward, naturalistic moviemaking is actually extremely artful. The vernacular settings conceal this somewhat, but the exquisite timing gives it away. Everything about this movie has been worked on until it is just right, and its faintly self-conscious assurance makes it almost frightening.
Like Alexander Payne's Election (another Perrotta title), Little Children is about a nice-looking town where things are not so nice - because they're human. Mr Perrotta is an artist of the small moral weakness, and he is seismically attuned to the stress of ennui that's unavoidable in any environment primarily designed to accommodate children. The little children of the title are not the central characters but the forces of gravity that bind the adults in place. Sexuality is scrubbed until it's almost something to which a child might be exposed, however fleetingly. Sexual deviance is the number-one horror.
There are two deviants in Little Children. One is a convicted felon, Ronnie McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley), whose presence in the town alarms parents. In one electrically tense scene, Ronnie shows up at the town pool, and paddles about underwater with flippers and a scuba mask, checking out the kiddies' bottoms until the mother's recognize him and the police are summoned. Mr Field communicates first the man's prurience and then his disorientation, as if he has been unjustly accused of something. The film (which treats Ronnie somewhat more sympathetically than the novel) suggests that, indeed, this might be so, as we come to sympathize with him and his "mommie" (Phyllis Somerville) when their house is besieged by Larry Hedges (Noah Emmerich), a troubled former cop. In his obsessive hounding of Ronnie, Larry is a bit of a deviant, too, although not in a sexual way.
The other sexual deviant is Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet). A former graduate student who can't quite believe that she has sunk to suburban life as the wife of a successful branding executive (Gregg Edelmann) and mother of three year-old Lucy (Sadie Goldstein). Sarah lives in a distracted haze until her senses focus on Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), a stay-at-home Dad - he's supposed to be studying for his third bar exam - whom the other moms in the playground call "The Prom King." One of them puts Sarah up to trying to extract a phone number from Brad, but once she and Brad are talking, Sarah has a better idea: she invites him to kiss her. This he very graciously does, sending the moms scurrying off with the children and marking Sarah as a pariah.
You might argue that, as it takes two to tango, Brad is just as deviant, but of course society does not regard men as deviants simply because they tumble into bed with attractive, willing women. (Sarah is not supposed to be very attractive, but Ms Winslet does what she can to comply.) Brad's infidelity to his wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), is dwarfed by his infidelity to the career that she has marked out for him. His nickname is all too apt: a former football star, he has somehow passed the stage of life when the joys of youth are claimable. His affair with Sarah is not a mature liaison but an attempt to reconnect with carefree adolescence, where all the consequences are distant. In the course of the story, Brad takes up football again, and, more recklessly, tries a few skateboard moves.
Sarah's passion for Brad, however, is very mature. Hers is a very fully awakened sensuality. This comes out in every sort of scene. At one point she accompanies a friend to a reading discussion group. The book of the week is Madame Bovary. Mary Ann (Mary B McCann), the leader of the playground moms and the only other young woman in the group, dismisses Flaubert's novel as the tale of a stupid slut. The other women try to introduce more nuanced views, but Mary Ann's morality of control works only in black and white. Finally, Sarah's sponsor turns to her. As Sarah defends the novel, her face begins to glow, and you know that talking about Emma's adulterous relationship with Rodolphe is making her feel the heat of her own with Brad. By the end, she is serenity itself - just as stupidly sure of a future with her lover as Emma - and Mary Ann's philistine comments no longer reach her. It is a love scene manqué.
(The book club scene would be a great place to begin the study of Mr Field's thoughtful filmmaking. He is very generous to the elderly ladies, and sensitive to the gradations of their empowerment as women. They coo appreciatively at Sarah, and you sense that she, and not the strident Mary Ann, would be welcome in the future. Behind all of this is a sharper, subtler point: these women are no longer charged with rearing little children. They get to be fully adult.)
Ronnie's story, such as it is, does really not intersect with Sarah's story until the end of the movie, but it suffices to charge hers with dread and isolation. There is an earlier, indirect contact, when the Pierces and the Adamsons get together for dinner, Sarah is deeply surprised to discover that Brad has met Ronnie - and not told her. As she exclaims, "You never told me!', Kathy's face, although quite out of focus in the background, visibly darks - and then the focus shifts, and you know that Kathy knows.
My advice, therefore, is to save Little Children for a time when you are both quiet and alert. It's too intelligent to be dozed through.
