With Blue Velvet, director
David Lynch certainly vividly reminded if not outright revealed to wide
swatches of
that behind the white picket fences of suburbia, life is not always what it
appears at first glance to be. The melancholic Little Children isn’t quite that groundbreaking or incendiary, nor
is that its aim, but it does pick up on some of the same themes of dark secrets
hidden behind middle-class façades, mixed in with extra helpings of the
adultery, ennui and self-loathing found in works like We Don’t Live Here Anymore. It seems like a film as fretfully
unraveling hand-me-down sweater, really — something nostalgic, knowable and
damaged at the same time.
Adapted from Tom Perrotta’s novel and directed by Todd
Field, in his follow-up to the Oscar-nominated In the Bedroom, the movie centers around Sarah Pierce (Kate
Winslet), a young mother who feels distant and apart, both from her older
husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) and all the other young wives and homemakers in
her neighborhood. Sarah shocks her so-called friends one day at the local park,
first talking to and then planting a harmless kiss on the hunky Brad Adamson (The Alamo’s Patrick Wilson, above left), a
stay-at-home dad who’s busy scrupulously avoiding studying for the bar exam.
Even though he came to this arrangement in accord with his wife Kathy (Jennifer
Connelly),
Brad is also unhappy in his marriage, and so he and Sarah become partners in
partnered activities for their adolescents, with the temptation of something
more always lurking, in unspoken fashion, just around the corner.
Ronnie McGorvey (Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley, quite
good), who’s just returned home to live with his mother May (Phyllis
Somerville) after a two-year sentence for exposing himself to kids. Hotheaded
retired cop Larry (Noah Emmerich) attempts to rally Brad and others in the
neighborhood against Ronnie, and not entirely without good reason, it sometimes
seems.
Children supports various interpretations, and it’s possible to both feel
sympathy for Sarah and Brad’s emotional waywardness while also disapproving of
their actions. Apart from an ending that rings a bit false, everything is of a
piece as far as the movie’s construction, and it capably induces thought and
discussion on the domestic and interpersonal matters it examines. Unfortunately,
in a seeming effort to cram in as much of the book’s grey-sky tonality as
possible, Perrotta and Field include a puffed-up, sham narration (from NOVA mainstay Will Lyman) that
undermines numerous scenes, highlighting what should be subtler, subtextual
moments. The performances, then, are what carry the film. Connelly’s role is a
bit underwritten — as this is a story told chiefly through Sarah and Brad’s eyes,
respectively — but she does a good job. Winslet, also an Academy Award nominee
for her work, is charactertistically superb, and Wilson, meanwhile, who also
starred in the minimalist, provocative Hard
Candy, gives fine, restrained
notes of languor to Brad’s boredom and wandering eye. He’s miserable because he’s
stopped communicating and trying, basically stopped participating in his own
life.
anamorphic widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, Little Children comes with both Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 stereo
surround English language audio tracks, as well as closed captions and optional
English and Spanish subtitles. There are, unfortunately and rather bafflingly,
no supplemental extras on the release. Whether this is because the movie was a
gigantic commercial disappointment (grossing only $5.5 million domestically
last fall, and another $8.5 million overseas) and/or Field wanted to preserve
the prerogative to release a more comprehensive and extras-laden DVD somewhere
down the line (I’ve heard rumors that there were back-channel discussions with
Criterion about granting them DVD licensing rights, similar to what Buena Vista
did with Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic)
only time will tell. As is, though, entirely adequate tech credits unfortunately
don’t make up for what is, in this regard, the substandard packaging of an Oscar
nominated film. B (Movie) D (Disc)