Review of Little Children (2006) by Ben G — 09 Apr 2010

Kate Winslet is the best actress of her generation. She is the most daringly sexual, revealing performer in movies with an uninhibited sensibility. As Sarah Pierce, a highly educated, reluctant wife and mother, who enters into an affair because she longs to break free from her mundane life, Winslet has a fierce intelligence that is exciting to watch.

Sarah is like a modern Madame Bovary, which the movie cleverly references. She draws the attraction of Brad (Patrick Wilson), a somewhat dim house husband married to a beautiful documentary filmmaker (Jennifer Connelly).

Both Sarah and Brad feel trapped in the routine of their lives and begin an affair. While this liaison is going on, we are introduced to a pedophile (Jackie Earle Haley) trying to integrate himself back into the community but is treated as an outcast.

Tom Perrotta adapted his own novel with director Todd Field, brilliantly shifting tones between satire and melodrama with a narration expressing an ironic detachment that suggests Kubrick. This is a rare sophisticated movie that feels literary.

Slyly funny and haunting, its about the frustrations of the lives of dissatisfied adults. Sunbathing in a red bikini, the voluptuous Winslet looks spectacular. Her scenes with Wilson are intensely erotic because Winslet exposes Sarah's awkwardness while revealing the pleasure she feels in being provocative.

Sarah is contemptuous of her husband's inattentiveness but she views her daughter as a nuisance. This is one of the most honest portrayals of a woman's conflicted emotions towards marriage and motherhood.

The ending is a tad tidy and the fate of the pedophile is too moralistic. Jackie Earle Haley is astonishing as a man we sympathize with and recoil from. With Noah Emmerich, Phyllis Somerville, Gregg Edelman, Trini Alvarado, Jane Adams, and narration by Will Lyman.