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Little Children (film)

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Little Children
Theatrical release poster
Directed byTodd Field
Screenplay by
Based onLittle Children
by Tom Perrotta
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyAntonio Calvache
Edited byLeo Trombetta
Music byThomas Newman
Production
companies
  • Bona Fide
  • Standard Film Company
Distributed byNew Line Cinema
Release date
  • October 6, 2006 (2006-10-06)[1]
Running time
137 minutes[2]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$26 million[1]
Box office$14.8 million[1]

Little Children is a 2006 satirical melodrama film[3] directed by Todd Field, based on the 2004 novel by Tom Perrotta, who co-wrote the screenplay with Field. It follows Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet), an unhappy housewife who has an affair with a married neighbor (Patrick Wilson). Also starring are Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley, Noah Emmerich, Gregg Edelman, Phyllis Somerville, and Will Lyman.

Little Children premiered at the 44th New York Film Festival, and was released October 6, 2006, on 5 screens, earning $145,946, with a $29,189 per-screen average. However, during its 64 weeks in theaters, 32 screens were the most on which New Line Cinema ever exhibited the film, only briefly increasing that count to 109 in the few weeks leading up to the 79th Academy Awards.[4] Consequently, few cinema-goers had access to it, significantly limiting its earnings. Despite this, it won numerous critics' group prizes and received Oscar nominations for Best Actress for Winslet, Best Supporting Actor for Haley, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Field and Perrotta.

Plot

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Sarah Pierce lives with her husband Richard and daughter Lucy in suburban Boston. Their marriage falls apart when she discovers his addiction to Internet pornography. One day, she meets Brad Adamson, a married law student who brings his 4-year-old son, Aaron, to the park. Brad and Sarah become friendly and, on a dare, kiss in the park, but resolve not to act on their mutual attraction.

One day, several parents panic when they see recently paroled sex offender Ronnie J. McGorvey swimming in the pool with the children. After he is escorted away by the police, Sarah and Brad take Lucy and Aaron back to her house and put the kids to bed. While Sarah is drying towels in her basement, Brad comes down and they have sex.

Ronnie lives with his mother, May, who believes that Ronnie's pedophilia would be cured if he met a woman his own age. Ronnie reluctantly agrees to go on a date May has arranged for him with a woman named Sheila, which ends badly when he masturbates next to her in her car by a children's playground.

When Brad skips taking the bar exam again, his wife Kathy grows suspicious and tells him to invite Sarah, Richard, and Lucy over for dinner. The intimacy evident between Brad and Sarah confirms her suspicions, and Kathy arranges for her mother to come for an extended visit. When Brad's football team plays its final game, Sarah attends and cheers as Brad scores the winning touchdown. Afterwards, they make out on the field, with Brad convincing her to run away with him.

Brad's friend Larry Hedges, a former police officer who went on disability after accidentally killing a little boy, spends much of his time harassing Ronnie. One night, he enters Ronnie's neighborhood with a megaphone. May comes out to confront him, suffering a heart attack in the process when Larry pushes her to the ground, causing him to be arrested. May is taken to a hospital, where she dies. When Ronnie returns home from the hospital, he finds a letter written by May saying: "Please be a good boy." Distraught, Ronnie destroys much of his mother's collection of Hummel figurines before grabbing a knife.

That same night, Sarah and Brad agree to run away together, and plan to meet in the park. As he heads to the park, he is distracted by skateboarding teenagers. Attempting to try a jump himself, he knocks himself out. When he regains consciousness, he asks the paramedics to call his wife to meet him at the hospital.

When Sarah takes Lucy to the park, she sees Ronnie stagger onto one of the swings, revealing to her that his mother died. When Lucy disappears, Sarah panics and rushes to find her, forgetting about Brad. She finds her staring at a street lamp and places her back into her car. Larry arrives to apologize to Ronnie about May, but when he discovers that Ronnie has castrated himself and is bleeding to death, he races him to the hospital, the same time as Kathy meets Brad there.

Cast

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Production

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Perrotta and Field working on the script

For this film, director Todd Field and novelist Tom Perrotta intended to take the story in a separate and somewhat different direction than the novel. "When Todd and I began collaborating on the script, we were hoping to make something new out of the material, rather than simply reproducing the book onto film," says Perrotta.[5]

Kate Winslet said she was left with a bruised bottom after filming her sex scene in a sink.[6]

Critical reception

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The performances of Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley garnered critical acclaim, earning them Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor respectively.

The film was well-received. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 80% approval rating based on 162 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Little Children takes a penetrating look at suburbia and its flawed individuals with an unflinching yet humane eye.”[7] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews.”[8]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote:

Mr. Field proves to be among the most literary of American filmmakers. In too many recent movies intelligence is woefully undervalued, and it is this quality—even more than its considerable beauty—that distinguishes Little Children from its peers. A movie that is challenging, accessible, and hard to stop thinking about.[9]

Scott later placed Little Children ninth on his list of the top 10 films of 2006.[10]

Carina Chocano of The Los Angeles Times also praised the film:

Little Children is one of those rare films that transcends its source material. Firmly rooted in the present and in our current frame of mind—a time and frame of mind that few artists have shown interest in really exploring—the movie is one of the few films I can think of that examines the baffling combination of smugness, self-abnegation, ceremonial deference and status anxiety that characterizes middle-class Gen X parenting, and find sheer, white-knuckled terror at its core.[11]

Awards and honors

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Main article: List of accolades received by Little Children

The film received multiple awards and accolades, including three Academy Award nominations: Best Actress for Kate Winslet, Best Supporting Actor for Jackie Earle Haley, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Todd Field and Tom Perrotta.[12]

Top ten lists

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Little Children was listed on many critics' top ten lists.[13]

Film archives

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35mm safety prints are housed in both the UCLA Film & Television Archive[15] and the Museum of Modern Art's permanent film collection.[16]

Home media

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The film was released on DVD on May 1, 2007. The DVD does not include extra features or a director's commentary.[17]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Little Children (2006)". Box Office Mojo. April 12, 2007. Retrieved November 23, 2016.
  2. ^ "Little Children (15)". British Board of Film Classification. October 19, 2006. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  3. ^ Cullum, Paul (January 21, 2007). "Acting All Grown Up in a Land of Children". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  4. ^ "Little Children (2006)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 29, 2022.
  5. ^ "Little Children production notes" (PDF) (Press release). New Line Cinema. 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 22, 2011. Retrieved July 1, 2010.
  6. ^ "Winslet Pained By Sink-top Sex Scene". femalefirst.co.uk. October 1, 2006. Retrieved February 13, 2022.
  7. ^ "Little Children (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  8. ^ "Little Children". Metacritic.
  9. ^ Scott, A. O. (September 29, 2006). "Playground Rules: No Hitting, No Sex". The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2010.
  10. ^ Scott, A. O. (December 24, 2006). "Here's to the Ambitious and the Altmans". The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2010.
  11. ^ Chocano, Carina (October 6, 2006). "'Little Children' movie review". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on August 9, 2010. Retrieved July 1, 2010.
  12. ^ "The 79th Academy Awards". oscars.org. October 7, 2014. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
  13. ^ "Metacritic: 2006 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". February 12, 2010. Archived from the original on February 12, 2010. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
  14. ^ Denby, David (December 11, 2006). "Memorable Movies of 2006". The New Yorker.
  15. ^ "'Little Children' UCLA Film Archives". UCLA Film and Television Archive. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
  16. ^ "'Little Children' MOMA Film Archives". Museum of Modern Art Film Archive. Archived from the original on November 24, 2010. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
  17. ^ "DVD Review: Todd Fields's Little Children on New Line Home Entertainment". Slant Magazine. April 28, 2007. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
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