Naughty by Nature

I have never been accused of being a tease – alright, maybe once or twice – so I have to start the week by saying that I didn’t see Casino Royale this weekend, after all. Shameful, I know, considering how I plugged the film like it was going out of style, but I did make the effort (every show I tried was sold out – good going, people!).

I did, however, see Todd Field’s Little Children, which finally opened in my neck of the woods.

Starring Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, and Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy), the film centers on a group of young married couples, and pays special attention to the affair that develops between Winslet’s unhappy Sarah, a stay-at-home mom whose husband has become obsessed with an Internet porn star, and Wilson’s unfulfilled Brad, an ex-jock stay-at-home dad frustrated by his filmmaker wife's wishes that he become a big-bucks lawyer.

As Sarah and Brad’s seemingly happy suburban Massachusetts lives intersect on the playgrounds and community pools of their small town in surprising and potentially dangerous ways, it becomes more and more evident that what lies beneath the surface of their beautiful lives is the thing of pain.

Little Children is a little bit of a satire, a little bit of a thrilling noir (there’s a seemingly pivotal sex offender character – played hauntingly by Jackie Earle Haley – who sends the tightly knit community into a tailspin), yet the more I think about it, the film’s also a little bit unfinished…unpolished.

The performances are fantastic: Winslet owns the film with her quiet longing and disquietingly expressed desire and rage, while Wilson reveals enough vulnerability to be truthful to his part – not to mention, if MTV still gave out the Most Desirable Male award at its Movie Awards it would be his to lose. But there are two stories to this film – and I didn’t think they gelled all that well.

Both Sarah and Brad feel trapped in their marriages, but the film never allows them to interact with their respective spouses (hers played by Greg Edelman, his by Connelly) long enough to explore in a meaningful way the root of their married lives’ problems.

Yes, they seem to get each other and should probably run away together – but why, really? The stakes are quite high when the possibility of ending a marriage is tossed around, but just how high are they in Sarah and Brad’s case? They make a fine naughty affair, but will they make a fine something else?

That is the question the film justly raises: It is Sarah and Brad who are the titular little children because they act like it. She starts off a strong, if disenchanted woman who essentially becomes a girl with a crush at the prospect of having a go with the handsome man dubbed The Prom King by three other playground moms. He becomes rejuvenated by Sarah’s enthusiasm over him.

And while I understand the thread of Haley’s story line, I didn’t quite get how it tied in, emotionally and tonally, with the main characters’. His presence is meant to pose a threat to these families’ lives, but then again they do a fine job of inviting danger in all on their own.

With so much on the line, it is best not to think of any of this, I suppose, and enjoy Little Children for what it is: A fantastically acted, often disturbing and humorous look at the trials and tribulations of suburbia.

My Rating ***

Photo: New Line Cinema.