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A funny, piercing examination of suburban selfishness and fear, Todd Field's adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel -Little Children is a masterful example of humanist filmmaking. As illicit lovers Sarah and Brad, Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson excel at portraying self-absorption, though they each come from distinctly different emotional places. Winslet's depiction of Sarah's fierce intelligence makes her lack of self-awareness all the more tragic. At numerous points in the film, Sarah displays a casual disregard for her three-year-old daughter when the toddler shows basic needs for her mother's attention, and Winslet's illustration of this dispassion is frighteningly realistic. Meanwhile, Brad is eternally immature, forever chafing at demands of responsibility, and unwilling or unable to live life on his own terms without a mother or wife to answer to. While countless films paint monstrous pictures of the horrors of bad parenting, Little Children sheds light onto the much more insidiously easy trap of negligent parenting.

The collective fear of these characters is that a safe and quiet life might not be what they really want. Despite the rigid structures of suburban etiquette, they all finally get the excuse to vent their frustrations when Ronnie, a convicted child molester played by Jackie Earle Haley, moves into the neighborhood. Ronnie's presence disrupts the community's placid exterior and, at last, the repressed suburbanites are able to breach their self-imposed silence and express their long-held anxieties by transferring their feelings onto this new, perceived threat. Haley's exceptional performance makes this rather schematic character entirely relatable, even during his most disturbing moments. He understands all of his worst instincts, but for all his effort is still unable to resist them. The most remarkable achievement of the film is that the three leads, as well as all of the supporting characters, are viewed with a lucid sense of compassion and humanity. The worst of their flaws and the consequences of their behaviors are presented unflinchingly, but the film passes judgment only on actions, never on people. The way Field and his gifted cast inspire us to feel for these often unlikable people makes the message at the heart of the film quite clear: that adulthood is defined by empathy. Funny, tragic, and very knowledgeable about human behavior, Little Children is full of truth. Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

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