127 out of 132 people found the following review helpful:

Kate is the Oscar line up!

A Customer from Norwich, 17th January, 2007

Blending the bleak irony and senstivity of 'American Beauty' with the sardonic wit of 'Desperate Housewives', This great film was one of the best of last year, despite having a low key cinema release. Yet the film is perhaps more suited to the smaller screen reinforcing the claustrophobia of its surburban setting. Kate Winslet plays Sarah, an uphappy new mum who begins affair with her equally disillusioned neigbour. As their illict passion intensifies, we meet an array of intriguing number of characters each with their own secrets. Although the ending is a little excessive, a funny and deeply moving portrait of a seemingly friendly community in crisis is captured with style. The performances are all excellent, with Kate Winslet on truly expectional form - Oscar recognition is well deserved!

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64 out of 78 people found the following review helpful:

Little Children

SAI81 from from Tonbridge, 18th March, 2007

At their local playground Sarah Pierse (Winslet) and Brad Adamson (Wilson) meet and, much to the envy of the other mothers Sarah spends her days with, start talking. Soon a frienship is built and soon that evolves into an affair built around setting their children up on playdates. At the same time a recently released pedophile (Haley) has moved back into their community to live with his mother (Somerville) only to find himself being harrassed by an ex-cop friend of Brad's (Emmerich). It's taken Todd Field some time to follow up his directorial debut, the strong but overrated In The Bedroom (2001) but the result of not rushing is that he's found a project to really invest himself in and made a better film this time, one that really marks him out as a talent to watch. This is an actors film and Field has assembled an excellent cast and draws fine work from all of them. There are two potential Oscar contenders here. Winslet will likely figure in the Best Actress race and though she'll probably lose to Helen Mirren's unstintingly overrated work in The Queen she certainly deserves the golden baldie. Dressing down she gives an excellent show as the housewife unhappy how her life has panned out and unable to connect with her child and makes the affair with Brad, and Sarah's thirst and need for it, believeable and compelling. Even better is Haley whose nomination (Supporting Actor) will depend on how brave the Academy is feeling. As Ronnie he walks a difficult tightrope making us sympathise with him one moment and recoil the next. Particularly strong is his reaction to his mother saying he should find a girlfriend his own age, a mournful 'I don't want a girlfriend my own age Mommy, I wish I did'. The cast is uniformly excellent though. Patrick Wilson builds on the promise of Hard Candy with a role 180 degrees away from that one, Noah Emmerich is sensational as the bitter, angry ex-cop and Jennifer Connely makes a nothing of a part play. Also worth mentioning is the ever brilliant Jane Adams whose one scene cameo it would be a crime to divulge, other than to say that it's another small masterpiece from a great actress. Field is growing as a director, Little Children looks very good indeed and has several scenes that stand out, most notably the first appearence of Ronnie and an appalling reveal in the final minutes of the film. So why not a top grade? There's one colossal miscalculation in the style that derails the films so completely every time it crops up that I very nearly didn't make it through the first act. Frequently Field drops in the voice of an omniscient narrator who seems to be reading direct from the Tom Perotta novel on which the film is based. This device (which TELLS us things we should be SEEING) is so annoying and so pretentious that I, and the rest of the audience, groaned each time it reccured. Fortunately this calms down after the first half hour but in an otherwise stunning film it's a baffling choice.

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43 out of 53 people found the following review helpful:

Surprising and sexual drama!

crockery from from Belfast, 28th April, 2007

So tasty, in fact, that Little Children is one of the most interesting films of recent years. It is far from the greatest, and is not devoid of faults, but a genuine evocation of interest should be attributed to Field's story. Every character unflinchingly demands our attention. We want to know more about precisely everyone in the community. In the front row for fascination sits Ronnie, the resident child molestor, who pends between likable and freak. He is the overriding nominator for 'Little Children' – and his presence greatly upsets the parents. Yet most salience is given to Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson as Sarah and Pierce – two lonely, bored and desperate housespouses who, in the midst of having nothing to do, innocently begin an extramarital affair with each other. Through calm narration, the film introduces Sarah as an anthropologist and remarks how she is different from the contingent of housemoms. However it becomes apparent that the director is the anthropologist and not Sarah. Indeed Field studies human relationships accordingly, interweaving loneliness, desperation, jealousy, lust and betrayal. Sarah, in fact, loses her 'objective' stance and melts in with the rest as she indulges in her passion with Brad. It needs to be said that 'Little Children' often tips over into comedy and it is this refreshing edge that bumps it up to 8/10 on my scale. It treats serious subjects, such as pedophilia, infidelity and loneliness – but it does so with the spark in the eye. A consistent cloud of laughter seemed to hover in the air of my theatre at the Stockholm Film Festival and Kate Winslet was undoubtedly the catalyst. She gives a fine performance with excellent emotional transparency, layered skill and above all with an inherent funny bone that translates to a goofy woman. The humour is surprisingly in-tune even with the other characters with all their quirks and afflictions, such as child-molestation and online pornography.

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39 out of 56 people found the following review helpful:

Like a fine wine...

Great Expectations from Leeds, West Yorkshire, 15th July, 2007

Based on Tom Perrotta's 2004 novel (screenplay by him also so you know it will be a sensible interpretation of the story) Todd Field's film examines senses of loss, passion, obsession and ontological issues - how we fit, or do not fit into our 'world'. All of the characters are flawed in the sense that they know that they are going slightly off the rails, or do not accept the role they are playing in their world. A loveless marriage for Kate Winslet'; Patrick Wilson has a beautiful career wife but is losing interest in his training for the bar whilst also being house husband; Gregg Edelman is an ex-cop who left his job in disgrace and is still obsessing over issues by demonstrating them in disturbing vigilante ways and Jackie Earle Hayley is a child sex offender (within Edelman's sights) recently released from prison and who is dealing with his demons whilst living with his mother. The story, as with Todd Field's earlier film 'In The Bedroom', unpeels itself slowly and intelligently up to its tragic and shocking climax. Don't want to spoil anything of course but, personally, this was one of the best films made in 2006 and will probably become a contemporary 'classic'.

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Little Children

A Customer from Notts, 21st March, 2010

Quirky and very surreal, the first ten minutes you think what the hell is this all about! Stick with it, You wont be disapointed.

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Surprising intrigue.

zedphelan from , 14th March, 2010

A tale of bored suburban housewives/husbands who longing for that something a little bit extra/exciting in there lives with a peodophile thrown in to the mix. I was expecting a slow sleeping pill of a film but you actually are drawn in waiting to see what happens next. I experienced many mixed feelings for the characters which constantly changed as the film went on and some did surprise me. Very good performances from the cast. Kate Winslet plays yet another blinder.

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Little Children

A Customer from London, 14th March, 2010

Having enjoyed two novels by Tom Perrotta - this and The Abstinence Teacher - I looked forward to this adaption but came away disappointed. The film follows a summer in the life of Sarah whose academic career has slipped away since marrying her rich husband Richard and bringing up a small child. She meets eye-candy house husband Tod at the local park and, to the disapproval of the neighborhood uptight 'soccer moms', they begin an affair. On the plus side, the film's cinematography captures a mood of suburbia, Kate Winslet is believable as a slightly disappointed woman drifting not too badly through life and a sub plot about the return of a paedophile to the neighbourhood introduces a darker and more thought-provoking note. However where the book gripped me as the character's emotional lives and moral panics of the town were explored, the film left me cold. I found the use of a voiceover to explain the character's inner world clumsy and seemed to imply a lack of faith in the viewer's interpretative abilities. Sarah and Todd's respective partners have little on-screen time so it is difficult to empathise with their motivations for entering into the affair. A comic interlude in the novel involving Sarah's husband Richard and his discovery of on-line porn is barely dealt with - yet it serves to balance her need to escape with his fantasy life. Most surprisingly for this genre of film which tends to emphasise the discovery of meaning in everyday life, little significance is granted to the events we have just witnessed. Much better films dealing with the banalities and beauty of everyday life are Junebug or Me, myself and I.

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Good performances

LisaJ from , 13th March, 2010

I loved the pace of this movie and the dark humour. This is one for reading between the lines and I think it does it brilliantly. At times you are uncomfortable, especially when you feel for the paedophile. This left me a little prickly and yet weirdly content. I like a movie that plays with my emotions and this one did.

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