Little Children

Every now and then you get a show which re-affirms your faith in movies. I'm trying to think of the really good movies I've watched over the past few years: only a handful I'd think. "l'Avventura", "8 1/2", "And Your Mother Too", "City of God", that's about it.

I think it's been a while since I liked a movie as much as I liked "Little Children". I had been hunting it down for a while now and I think it's not going to come out on VCD. I had been to Video Ezy and taken my customary 5, and imagine what a surprise when I found that they charge $25 for 5 instead of $15 like they used to. Luckily they threw in a free rental, so I used that voucher on "Little Children".

I took advantage of the fact that my parents were away for the weekend to get a whole pile of films that I've been waiting to come out on VCD rental:

Snakes on a Plane (watched it)
Breaking and Entering (watched it)
History Boys (watched it)
Little Children (watched it)
Miami Vice
Miss Potter (watched it)
Pan's Labyrinth
Last King of Scotland (watching it)
The Queen
The Fountain


I've always liked Kate Winslet. I always thought that she provided 3 out of 5 reasons why "Titanic" was such a big hit. (Those 5 reasons are herself, her 2 tits, Leonardo DiCaprio and a nice ship.) Strangely I liked all the sex scenes with her in it. Not only because it's porn, but there's a certain vulnerability and a not unattractive glow in her face because she's shagging this guy she's got a crush on. The scenes were great: you could feel the warm flush of a new love, but also that this was based on some mutual misconception. One a scholar, and another a jock: what sort of future could they have together?

I'm just wondering about "American Beauty", which were 1 of the 3 most important films made at the end of the 20th century (the other 2 are "Fight Club" and "The Matrix"). It was my favourite movie for around 3 months after I saw it. I remember staying up until 3 after I watched it, and thinking about all the ideas that lay behind it. I even wrote a lengthy review about it once and I'm glad I did it because if I didn't all those ideas that were running through my head would have been lost.

If there was a single message to "American Beauty", it was "stick it to the man, and live for yourself". If there is a message to "Little Children", it is "don't be a selfish asshole". Now considering that both movies are concerned with suburban anomie that's quite a contrast. I know suburbia well. I've lived in it for either a 3rd of my life, or most of my life, depending on whether you consider my current place a suburb or a HDB condo. (It's a bit of both.) They are nice but cold places.

Spoilers follow:

I loved it when you had Jennifer Connelly being able to detect that her husband and Kate Winslet were having an affair. I loved it when you had this tough guy waiting for Brad at the bar and muttering that he's too much of a loser when the tough guy was trying to make anybody and everybody the loser so that he'd not have to face up to himself being a loser. My favourite part was when Brad and Kate Winslet were about to elope, and he suddenly got distracted by a group of skateboarders, and decided to try some skateboarding stunts himself. Can you imagine, playing with a bunch of kids, when you're supposed to have a romantic elopement with your mistress?

I liked the part where she had a face off with one other person in the neighbourhood through a book club discussion of "Madam Bovary". It was a proxy argument: that other person knew that she was having an affair. She was taking the moralistic viewpoint that everything Madame Bovary did was wrong, and Kate Winslet insisted that she was heroic in trying to rebel against her straitened circumstances.

A very nice touch: they were trying to figure out the sexual allusions in the novel, and ended up concluding that one of the men had anal sex with Madame Bovary.

The end is not a happy ending, because there are a few fairly tragic outcomes. But there is a glimmer of hope for everyone, because everybody comes across a small epiphany where it's a potential starting point for them to realise what jerks they've been and hopefully make things better. But it's only a hope after all.