"Little Children" - Another Powerful Adult Drama

"Little Children," a powerful drama, has been quietly playing in a select amount of theaters since mid-October. Despite mostly terrific and well-deserved reviews, the film has garnered little attention until it was recently nominated for a few Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture - Drama. Hopefully the nominations will kick start this movie into a wider distribution as it is one of the best films of 2006 and should be seen.

The film tells several stories involving the citizens of a town where everyone seems to either know everyone else or, they know someone who knows someone. When a man once convicted of exposing himself to a child returns to live with his mother, the town is inundated with posters of the man with the cautionary heading, "Are your children safe?" Each of these stories seem unrelated but all beautifully converge on one another thanks to a tightly written screenplay by Todd Field (who also directed) and Tom Perrotta (on whose novel this film is based).

Kate Winslet (Golden Globe nominee) plays Sarah, a housewife and mother with a fairly mundane life. She lives in a home that was inherited through her husband's family and looks most forward to her nightly walk with a girlfriend. Most days she spends at the park with her daughter and three other women who happen to know a little something about everything. She has a husband who much prefers looking at Internet pornography then at her - but that seems to be okay with her. She seems to be a satisfactory mother but isn't above leaving her daughter with a babysitter for a weekend tryst or taking her eyes off the child long enough not to be able to locate her.

One day at the park the women spot a man named Brad, whom the three gossips have nicknamed "The Prom King" because of his rugged good looks. Brad is a stay at home dad whose wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), is a documentary filmmaker. Brad is not overly content to stay home all the time but doesn't complain. One day the women bet Sarah she can't get his phone number and, as a joke, she persuades the man to hug and kiss her. This will set off a series of events where the women fully believe Sarah is having an affair with Brad and, the eventual affair. Sarah starts visiting the town pool where Brad most often takes his son and the two strike up a friendship that will lead to a potentially destructive affair.

In the meantime, Brad runs into an old college friend, Larry, who is now spearheading a campaign to rid the town of the potential pedophile, Ronald (superbly played by Jackie Earle Haley). Larry often takes the cause too far by harassing Ronald and his mother in the middle of the night and scrawling messages on their front door and sidewalk. Larry, an ex-cop with a bitter secret of his own, convinces Brad to join a weekly football team filled mostly with cops. Brad is trying to study for the Bar Exam, which he has failed twice before, but he fools Kathy by leaving the house every night to go to the library and ends up spending most of his time at the park watching the teenagers play ball. He takes the opportunity to join the football team not only as a way of passing time while he is supposed to be at the library, but also so he can re-capture part of the youth that has eluded him for several years.

Ronald is a troubled man in his late 40's trying to start his life over after serving prison time. He has an almost unhealthy devotion to his mother (much like James Cagney in "White Heat") and simply wants to take care of her and live as normal a life as possible. Of course the townspeople will never allow that and it is never more evident as when Ronald visits the public pool on a scorching hot day and, when his presence is detected, the pool filled with patrons quickly empties leaving Ronald by himself with dozens and dozens of eyes gazing upon him. When he is being escorted out by the police he turns to the crowd and announces, "I was just trying to cool off." Director Field indicates, with a shot from Ronald's point of view underwater, that "cooling off" may be the last thing on his mind. As soon as Ronald leaves everyone returns to the pool as if nothing ever happened. Ronald's mother is desperate for him to find a woman his own age and get married but Ronald knows that this is unlikely. He can't relate to people his own age, especially women, and only has affection for children. When he finally does go on a blind date with a woman who appears to be even more troubled then he, Ronald looks and acts as if he is the normal half of the date. Only at the end of the night does Ronald reveal his true nature in one of the most shocking and unexpected moments in any movie this year.

"Little Children" continues the trend that most die-hard movie lovers yearn for with the fall movie releases - a strong, well written and acted drama that isn't besieged by car chases and explosions. The movie moves at a leisurely pace (the film runs 131 minutes) but is never boring as Field explores his characters in depth until he gets to the very core of each of them.

Field likes to explore the normalcy of human beings and then strips away the layers until the flaws show through. With his first film, "In The Bedroom," (2000), Field showed us the lives of a seemingly happy family, a mother (Sissy Spacek), father (Tom Wilkinson), and son (Nick Stahl). The son begins an affair with an older woman (Marisa Tomei) and is soon murdered by the woman's ex-husband. Then we helplessly watch as the parents struggle with their own lives and their life together through the grieving process. It was a powerfully told drama that was nominated for several Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Here Field, previously an actor best known as the piano playing Nick Nightingale, who gave Tom Cruise the password to the orgy filled mansion in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," devours simple suburban life. A gathering of a women's book club leads to accusations between women that are carefully hidden within the reviews of their weekly book. A dinner get-together leads to private thoughts of dis-trust. A small act of anger balloons into a series of shocking events. A dare to ride a skateboard changes the lives of several characters. Field has announced himself as an important American film director and one can only hope he doesn't wait another six years before his next project.

The performances are all first rate. Winslet is likely to be nominated for an Academy Award. Patrick Wilson, as Brad, exhibits both the pretty boy image and overgrown child equally. Connelly isn't given much to do until late in the film but the camera loves her and she glows. Haley is the real revelation here. Best known as punk Kelly Leak, who would become the best player on the Bears in "The Bad News Bears," (1976), Haley startles as a sick sexual deviant who only loves his mother and to hell with everyone and everything else. If he isn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor there should be an investigation.

"Little Children" is an unflinching film for adults about adults who sometimes don't act as responsibly as they should given the situations they are in. It may be too "small" a film to be nominated for Best Picture, but it deserves to be.

If this gem is playing within a reasonable driving distance I cannot recommend it more highly. If you miss it you should search for it whenever it comes out on DVD. When it is over it will lead to many discussions. How often can you say that about a movie?