With his newest feature Little Children, director Todd Field — who moved audiences with his 2005 film In The Bedroom (starring Charlottesville’s own Stacey Spacek) — returns with a provocative examination of modern suburban life, marriage, fidelity, and the loneliness of secret dreams. Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly and Patrick Wilson star in this multi-layered romantic satire co-written by Field and Tom Perrotta from Perrota’s acclaimed novel of the same name.
In East Wyndam, Massachusetts, the enviable lives of young married couples intersect in the playgrounds, community pools, and streets of their small town in hidden and potentially dangerous ways. Sarah (Winslet) has a PhD in English literature and is still coming to terms with living in the suburbs and raising children. She hangs out with, but does not connect to, the other suburban moms (women who can declare a spa treatment “an intense spiritual experience”) and views her shallow neighbors as sociological specimens instead of peers.
Those moms, in turn, are more interested in Brad (Wilson), a stay-at-home dad and former athlete whom they refer to as “the Prom King”. Brad, married to Kathy (Connelly), a striking PBS documentary filmmaker, is unenthusiastically anticipating taking the bar exam for the third time. Partly out of intrigue, and partly just to shake up her neighborhood, Sarah begins a flirtation with Brad that unexpectedly leads to steamy sexual trysts during their children’s “nap time”.
The genuine peccadilloes happening in their neighborhood remain largely unnoticed by the community members more focused on the imagined deeds of a sexual predator who has been released from prison and now lives nearby with his mother. As the story unravels, so do the lives of these reckless characters, only to slowly intertwine again. Even Brad’s wife finds herself in a book club with Sarah, her husband’s secret lover, who feels compelled to defend the title character of Madame Bovary.
Strong performances from all the actors, crisp cinematography, and sure-handed direction create an involving and eccentric tale. Little Children is an intriguing study of morality, small town paranoia, and the hunger for passion and meaning in uncontrolled lives.