The dark side of everyday life
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A seemingly happy life in the American suburbs is a topic increasingly raised by filmmakers. It seems that since the time of "American Beauty" it has ceased to be a taboo subject, it even appears in TV series such as "Ready for Everything", although here with a grain of salt. All because these beautiful settlements on the outskirts of big cities are often a source of human frustration, and what happens behind closed doors of houses is far from the image of a perfect life. The director of the film "Small Children", Todd Field, refutes carefully built myths about a happy American family in which one spouse makes a professional career, while the other takes care of home and children. Field's heroes are two parents who one day meet accidentally in a playground. She, Sarah, is the mother of three-year-old Lucy, a woman who gave up her scientific ambitions to devote herself to marriage and raising a child, but she still pretends to be an anthropologist engaged in research. He, Brad, is the father of little Aaron, the eternal boy who his wife maintains, and who postpones his studies for the bar exam every night, which he has failed twice. They are both unhappy, but each of them for a different reason - Sarah fell into a failed marriage, which increasingly deprives her of her own identity.
Brad does not really know what he would like to do in life, and caring for his son is a temporary escape from him. The friendship of Sarah and Brad is born slowly, but soon binds them together more and more to finally turn into a hot romance. The trick is to make an important and very moving film that is not difficult to read and does not overwhelm with its weight. Field succeeded because he put on tragicomedy. There are plenty of funny moments here, and although it is often laugh through tears, soaked in bitterness, this way of leading the story releases the tension that accompanies us from the first scenes of the film. And although there is not much going on in it - after all, it is a record of days, one of which is similar to the other - from the beginning we know that something "hangs in the air" and we are waiting intently for what will happen. But "Little Children" is a picture that exposes not only hypocrisy and building an artificial vision of a perfect life. This film also shows the parochiality of the American middle class, schematic thinking and blind compliance with accepted norms. A group of housewives who conceal boredom and fatigue of marital life behind careful makeup and designer clothes, a policeman who is unable to deal with a tragic event from the past, or convicted of exposing himself, a loner cursed by the rest of society - they are also heroes of "Little Children". The film forces you to ask how many more such frustrations are hiding behind the walls of candy houses and to think about whether we accidentally strive for such a life. Kate Winslet, playing the role of Sarah, has once again proved her versatility. She managed to show the emotional unstable character, uncertainty and disbelief in her own strength, while the actress avoided excessive melodramatism. It is also clear that Winslet has a considerable distance to herself, she is not afraid to show as a neglected woman, she is not afraid of scenes of complete nudity and showing the imperfections of her body, she is natural and real, and this gives her credibility. Patrick Wilson keeps her pace.
His Brad is a typical "little child" in the body of a thirty-year-old and although we can see that he works as a father, his carefree is sometimes so annoying that he can completely upset him. The whole is complemented by the great creations of the actors of the second plan, and above all Noah Emmerich and Oscar-nominated Jackie Earle Haley. Field used very simple procedures, focused on slow filming of details, and above all the facial expressions of the characters and their way of being, he also introduced the voice of the narrator, which in an unobtrusive way helps us understand the behavior of the characters. I have not seen a film for a long time, which, like "Little Children", would talk about ordinary things in such a smooth but very emphatic way, while drawing the best detective story. His biggest advantage is that the story presented in it seems amazingly real and like nothing unusual, after all the characters are ordinary people from the neighborhood, but something makes shivers go down our backs. .
