(120 mins, 15)
Directed by Todd Field; starring Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley
Watching Todd Field's Little Children, I was reminded of a celebrated New Yorker cartoon by George Booth. A parson runs from his church pursued by angry parishioners. Beside the building is a board announcing the subject of that Sunday's sermon: 'Are We All Prostitutes?' This remarkable film is set in a similarly self-righteous American township and it also recalls the affluent exurban New England territory explored by New Yorker writers like John Cheever and John Updike.
Field, an actor best known as the louche, blindfolded pianist who lures Tom Cruise into the corrupt world of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, made a rightly acclaimed directorial debut five years ago with In the Bedroom, based on a short story by Andre Dubus. Set in Maine, it dealt with relations between parents and children and culminated in a terrible act of violence. This new film tackles similar themes further to the south, in Massachusetts, and has a similarly explosive climax. It, too, has unconcealed literary origins, in this case a novel by Tom Perrotta, who collaborated with Field on the screenplay and who also wrote the source novel for Alexander Payne's Election
The movie has three central characters: discontented housewife Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet), who's having trouble with her pre-school daughter; house husband Brad (Patrick Wilson), who's taking care of his small son while his wife is out making documentary movies; and Ronnie J McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley), a middle-aged mother's boy who recently served a jail sentence for exposing himself to children and is the subject of a bitter campaign to run him out of town.
Almost equal attention is given to all three, but the film's point of view is that of a gently ironic authorial voice that provides an intermittent, highly literary commentary on the soundtrack.
Sarah, a newcomer to the community, meets Brad at a children's playground, having first heard of him from three gossipy mothers who frequent the place. They've created fantasies around him and nicknamed him 'Prom King', but have never spoken to him. The forward Sarah, who hasn't been drawn into their circle and thinks herself superior to them, strikes up a conversation with him. As a playfully provocative act, she gets Brad to give her a hug and a kiss, which goes beyond what this censorious trio find acceptable and, rather too demonstratively, they leave. Both she and Brad are outsiders, driven together by the indifference of their spouses.
Brad's chilly wife (Jennifer Connelly) is absorbed in her work and with their child and he himself is singularly immature. A former college football star, he's about to sit the state bar exam for the third time, but instead of going to night school he wistfully watches teenage skateboarders at play. Sarah's husband, a successful 'branding consultant', is hooked on internet porn and she discovers him masturbating in front of the computer screen, a pair of lace panties over his head.
Meanwhile, Ronnie, the town's official sexual monster, comes one hot summer's day to the community pool where Sarah and Brad are having innocent trysts accompanied by their children. Ronnie enters the water wearing snorkel and flippers, swimming dangerously near to young bathers (there's a restraining order keeping him away from schools and playgrounds) and there ensues a scene resembling the panic on the beach in Jaws. Everyone rushes out, leaving the pathetic Ronnie alone in the water. The police arrive and, shortly thereafter, when a storm comes down, Brad drives Sarah to her home and they begin their affair.
The film has deliberate changes of tone between the seriously disturbing and the comic. The commentary is witty, but there are no jokey lines, though a deal of the dialogue is very funny. For instance, when Brad tells Sarah his wife makes documentaries, she says: 'Like Michael Moore?' and he replies: 'Like PBS.' Ronnie's elderly widowed mother insists on arranging a meeting with a suitable woman through a lonely hearts column and the result is an encounter so complicated and truthful that you don't know whether to laugh, cry or avert your eyes. Ronnie is not played for sympathy but for understanding and, indeed, one of the themes of this wholly unsentimental movie involves coming to terms with ourselves, with those around us and the communities in which we live.
The violent climactic sequence involves Brad, Sarah, Ronnie and a sad ex-cop who's been leading the vigilante campaign against the sexual deviant, and arises out of a desire of all four to take drastic actions intended to change their lives in a radical manner. There are echoes here of Hemingway's shocking short story 'God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen'.
Occasional scenes don't work and they stick out because it is mostly so well done. It's infinitely better than the smugly judgmental American Beauty, which is set in an identical milieu. The acting is excellent and Winslet does a beautiful job, especially in a tricky scene at a book group run by middle-aged women where the theme is Madame Bovary. Recognising herself in Emma, she finds 'something beautiful and heroic about her rebellion'.
The most extraordinary performance is that of Jackie Earle Haley, who's even more unprepossessing in appearance than Paul Giamatti, as Ronnie. Haley was an adolescent star of the 1970s in such pictures as The Bad News Bears. But he found no work as an adult and had a succession of blue-collar jobs until his recent rediscovery in middle age to play Willie Stark's bodyguard in All the King's Men and the challenging role of Ronnie here.