>>REVIEW
LITTLE CHILDREN
STARRING Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson and Jennifer Connelly
DIRECTED BY Todd Field
Opens Friday, November 3
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It’s the latest hot topic among feminist pop writers – although we have won the right to choose whether or not we stay home with our children, life as a stay-at-home parent can be boring. The miracle of motherhood, and more specifically, spending your days alone with a pre-schooler while trapped in a suburban castle can be lonely and tedious, and damn it sister, you shouldn’t be vilified for saying so. Or, at least, so say legions of newspaper columnists and talk-show guests, as does the premise of director Todd Field’s latest film.
Like Field’s last film In the Bedroom, Little Children’s plot is driven more by emotion than by actual events. In fact, Little Children’s script (based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, who co-wrote the script with Field) features barely any action. In the over two hours that it takes for the movie to unfold, virtually nothing, save for a few juicy sex scenes, happens.
The film follows two central characters – a bookish stay-at-home mom named Sarah (played by Kate Winslet, who Field has turned into a "normal- looking" housewife by denying her hair conditioner or eyebrow tweezers) and Brad (Patrick Wilson), a dreamy stay-at-home dad who is depressed over his failure to become a lawyer. Sarah is married to the wealthy, but stiff Richard (Gregg Edelman), who she catches with his nose buried in a pair of used panties he bought off the Internet. Brad is house-husband to the beautiful, but overly critical Kathy (Jennifer Connelly). Brad and Sarah start hanging out with the kids at the local pool and before long, their relationship leads them to the bedroom.
Little Children is full of beautiful imagery and with the help of an odd male narrator, Field captures a mood that shifts between fairytale and suburban ennui. While the concept of a story rooted in loneliness and fear of monotony is thought-provoking, Field never quite gets the film off the ground. While a delicately handled subplot about a neighbourhood pedophile adds some texture, Brad and Sarah’s affair is not interesting enough to carry such a long movie. Since they feel little passion – like all the characters in the story, they seem drawn together out of convenience and desperation rather than actual love or even lust – they aren’t that compelling to watch.
That sense of detachment and boredom is probably what Fields is aiming for, but a successful atmosphere does not necessarily make for a successful film. It is possible to make a movie about the mundane without the film itself becoming dull, but Field didn’t quite manage to pull it off with Little Children. |
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