There used to be a time when germy swing sets-or, on a bad day, a used heroin syringe-were the biggest obstacles to avoid at the playground. As Todd Field’s Little Children shows, once you add in a group of cliquey housewives, a sexy “stay-at-home dad” and a neighborhood sex offender, you’ll get some entirely different problems.
In Field’s adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel from Tom Perrotta, who also wrote the source material for Election, playground parents-toting their micro-managed offspring-converge daily at the town park to do what “stay-at-homes” apparently do best-fantasize about a more exciting life.
As we learn from an eerily distant God-like narrator, this fantasy life would preferably involve the sole Mr. Mom of the park, Brad Adamson, played by the typically hunky Patrick Wilson. When he and the outsider of Club Mommy, Sarah Pierce, (played by Kate Winslet, who is already creating Oscar buzz) begin an affair, the playground-and eventually, the town pool and the top of Sarah’s washing machine-becomes the place where fantasies are realized.
Secondary to the torrid affair is the story of Ronnie McGorvey, played by Jackie Earle Haley, a recently released sex offender who has infiltrated the family-orientated neighborhood. Earle accomplishes the impossible by creating a pervert who is not only downright scary, but elicits sympathy from the audience at the same time.
What begins as a movement to purge McGorvey from the area quickly becomes an obsession for ex-cop Larry Hedges. A character that normally would be annoying or predictable is reworked by Noah Emmerich into a believably bored family-man who desperately needs a purpose.
While the basic story is far from innovative-young suburbanites struggling to maintain their pre-married selves-the subtleties in the performances and Field’s ear for realistic dialogue pull the film out of the usual, “American Middle-Class Whiners in the Dark Side of Suburbia” hole. The film is at points uncomfortably honest, and will leave you wondering if we are all in some way “little children,” unsure of our own behaviors and desperate to please others while still remaining true to our own desires.
Like his last picture In The Bedroom, Little Children is a triumph for Todd Field and for all involved-the stars should pick out their Oscar wardrobes now.