Review: LITTLE CHILDREN

I came to this film with absolutely no expectations. It was recommended to me in the course of an ordinary ‘what’s new?’ exchange with a family member. I’d read no buzz. I’d seen no trailers, even on other DVD’s. Having now watched it I’ve come to regard this film as one of the most intelligent, insightful, and satisfying movies I’ve watched in a long time.

Little Children is the story of a man and a woman who carry on a brief affair in modern suburbia, in part to blunt the sense of ennui, alienation, and disappointment they feel in their lives. As with all lovers their reality is delimited within the space of their mutual intimacy. The objective world of careers, parental concerns, in-laws, and acquaintances, a world from which they already feel totally removed, becomes unreal and absurd.

Sarah is in an unsatisfying marriage to a man who turns to internet pornography for his gratification. Thus he moves even farther from Sarah, whose dissatisfaction with her marriage is reflected in her puzzled anxiety regarding her lack of feeling for her own daughter.

Brad, the man with whom she becomes involved, entertains fond memories of his youth as a high-school quarterback, and the small victories such a thing entails. Though he seems a sensible, good-natured man, he is vaguely troubled by what he perceives as his young son’s artificiality toward him. Also, his attractive wife, though outwardly loving and attentive, gently declines to be intimate with him while simultaneously urging him to pursue a professional path for which he has absolutely no regard.

Trapped in unsatisfying marriages Sarah and Brad turn to each other in order create something real for themselves, to escape the absurd banality of ordinary and formulaic relationships which serve only to suffocate, not affirm.

At the same time the neighborhood is in turmoil about a pedophile, who has recently been released from prison and who has returned to his home among the children and their frantic parents. He is portrayed as a physically repellant individual who is acutely aware of the fact that no woman would care to be with him. Yet, he has a loving and fiercely protective mother, who seeks to assure him that even he can find someone with whom to share his life.

I enjoy films that provide audiences with an amount of moral ambiguity, which refuse to neatly resolve issues in an obvious manner. This picture immediately seduces the viewer with likable and sympathetic characters, and then proceeds to slowly uncover the fatal flaws in their characters which serve in large part to explain the dénouement of their affair. That the central characters themselves may have imperfections in their natures which lead to the ultimate failure of their affair is clearly adumbrated by the use of a discussion of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary by a book club which Sarah joins.

I was surprised that the audience was allowed to participate so much in the private lives of the pedophile, Ronnie, and his mother, May. Usually such a character is relegated to the shadows of the story, and is allowed to leap into the light only to deliver a good scare. In this movie the screenwriter not only takes the viewer into the private moments of an ordinarily grotesque and sketchy character; he actually garners sympathy for him.

Still, and this is the device I so enjoy in more thoughtful films, it’s largely a come-on. The director and screenwriter lead the audience to the point of believing that this fellow may really not be so bad after all, only to have him do something that affirms what a disgustingly sick puppy he really is.

Sarah and Brad pursue their affair, and the viewer sympathizes with them, believing that somehow the vicissitudes of life have denied them the fulfillment they each deserve. Then the viewer is abruptly made aware of Sarah’s own insecurities, a lack so profound as to lead Sarah to stalk her new lover. At the same time Brad’s own lassitude becomes more intolerable, and the justification for his continuing the affair a little less convincing. It’s one thing to seek out a lover when one’s husband masturbates while sniffing a stranger’s panties and looking at porn on the internet. The rationale for cheating on a gorgeous and supportive wife is a little more difficult to fathom. This serves in part to explain a breathless exchange between Brad and Sarah during their initial bout of passion. In response to his questioning Sarah tells Brad that she doesn’t regret what they’re doing. He replies that he does.

I find that I’ve written much about the story but little about how it’s presented. I can only justify this by saying that for me the quality of a movie resides principally in the screenplay. I’m not familiar enough with the art of cinematography to make critical statements regarding a film’s technical aspects, except in the broadest terms. The direction of Little Children is solid and apt. There is little experimentation aside from an infrequent dual-screen shot. I may disagree with some when I say that the occasional use of narration only adds a degree of understanding to the perception of the characters and the world they inhabit. I do not agree that the camera is allowed to linger needlessly on characters as they register their reactions to dialogue and events. The editing, too, is apt.

Aside from Kate Winslet I’m not familiar with the rest of the cast. Still, all the performances are consistently fine. I was particularly impressed with the strength of Phyllis Somerville’s performance as May, the pedophile’s mother. She delivers what is undoubtedly one of the more memorable pieces of gently sad wisdom a mother can give her child:

“You're a miracle, Ronnie. We're all miracles. Know why? Because as humans, every day we go about our business, and all that time we know... we all know... that the things we love... the people we love, at any time now can all be taken away. We live knowing that and we keep going anyway. Animals don't do that.”

In sum, Little Children is a satisfying, intelligent, and analytical film about the dramatic ordinariness of modern suburban life. It treats of the means people often employ to extract some sort of meaning out of lives that are otherwise nothing but unceasing rounds of ordinary minutae. The film succeeds in drawing the viewers into the narrative, then skillfully leading them to places they didn’t anticipate.