Meet me at the playground

People, please, run, don’t walk, to the local theater and see Todd Field’s LITTLE CHILDREN. I saw it last night with my friend, Grace, and I cannot get it off my mind.

My favorite, Kate Winslet, stars as Sarah Pierce, disinterested stay-at-home mother of Lucy and wife to Richard, a man more interested in internet love than that of his wife. Patrick Wilson plays Brad Anderson, the Mr. Mom of the neighborhood, who takes care of his son, Aaron, (and pretends to the study for the bar for the third time) while his gorgeous wife (played by Jennifer Connolly) rules the roost and makes documentary films.

Sarah and Brad meet and what begins as a joke turns into an affair (this is not a spoiler) – an affair that echoes that of one Madame Bovary. The b plot is the story of Ronnie McGorvey, the convicted pedophile who has moved back into the neighborhood, and how the community reacts to him.

Between the affair and the Ronnie plot, the tension is palpable and the film builds slow and steady to a full boil. The script and the direction do an excellent job of creating characters that seem sympathetic and you find yourself rooting for them, and then in the next scene, their behavior is so damming, you are sick to your stomach. A fascinating examination of the individual, the desire for love and to be understood, and the terrifying other side of the nurturing community – the angry mob.

Everyone – and I mean everyone – gives an amazing performance, not to mention the narrator, who neatly helps the story along.

Please go see it so we can talk about it!

FROM ONE EXTREME TO THE OTHER

We went to some cinematic extremes during Mike's convalescence the past few days. Sunday night it was THE 40-YEAR OLD VIRGIN; today we finished up CACHE.

VIRGIN was surprisingly sweet, and Steve Carrell was adorable and heart-warming in the title role. Lots of brilliant support in this one, from the always-reliable and amazing Catherine Keener to Jane Lynch, so outrageous in BEST IN SHOW and who is similarly sly and hysterical here as Paula, the manager of SmartTech who wants to get in Andy's pants. I also loved Andy's little posse - in spite of their quirks and some of their questionable tactics, they really just wanted to help him find happiness.

I remember when this film came out last year, I thought it was going to a Farrelly-brothers style, juvenile gross-out fest; on the contrary, I found it be incredibly intelligent, observant and sensitive about the challenges of finding a mate. Plus, it's outrageously funny.

CACHE left me scratching my head. But it also made me genuinely gasp in a few spots, which is a cool and scary feeling that I don't get too often in movies. I love a good psychological thriller, and this one asks a few more questions than most films of the genre. Nothing is spelled out in the end, to be sure, but it's
a compelling ride. And just by virtue of it's French-ness, it has that added indicia of cool. Nice, too, to see Juliette Binoche acting in her native language.

THAT CYNICISM

It's a bit embarrassing to admit the number of ALL-TIME CLASSIC films that I have never seen, but thankfully, I can now cross ALL ABOUT EVE off the list. Definitely worthy of its place in the canon, and Bette Davis truly is a force of nature (YES, this was the first time I had ever seen her on screen. Shame! Shame!) She's truly mesmerizing as Margo Channing, diva extraordinaire.

As I watched, I was trying to imagine if a film like this could succeed today, with a group of strong (but really, how strong?) women driving the action with their men on the side-lines? We have bemoaned here the sad state of roles for women in Hollywood, and EVE made me think alot about that. But most of all, it was just plain fun, with a rollicking, quick-witted script and spot-on performances. Special props must go to George Sanders, deliciously dastardly as Addison DeWitt. Some of the greatest handling of a cigarette holder ever captured on film.

In spite of its conventionality, I found EVE to be strangely feminist in some ways, perhaps best captured in Karen's response to her husband, Lloyd, when he asks he when she became so cynical. "I acquired that cynicism," she insists, "the day I realized I was different from little boys."