American Ugly

Ungrown adults protect their children from themselves.

by Cindy Fuchs

If you conclude from this scene that Ronnie's the "time bomb" in Little Children , you'd only be partly right. An eerie manchild who can't be protected enough by his good-hearted mother, May (Phyllis Somerville), he is also a visible threat to children. And so he's caught at the center of the movie's tangle of typical dread-and-desire-in-the-burbs melodramas, laced together by a dispassionate third-person narrator (Will Lyman, of PBS's Frontline ), whose observations tend to sound literary (the source novel is by Tom Perrotta), judgmental and comic.

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON: Patrick Wilson and Kate Winslet cuddle up.

All the stories feature children, whether adult or actually "little." A "concerned parents group" has been leaving curse words spray-painted on May's sidewalk. In fact, this "group" consists of another childish adult, a very angry retired cop named Larry (Noah Emmerich). While his rage is based in his own history involving a child, he's currently focused on Ronnie. Whether to drive the offender away or give himself something to do, Larry enlists the support of his high school friend Brad (Patrick Wilson). Now a stay-at-home dad studying for his third try at the bar exam, Brad doesn't pay much attention to Larry's cause, though he does agree to take a pile of flyers and to play on Larry's nighttime football team.

When he's not reliving his own glory days as a young and hopeful quarterback, Brad's taking his young son to the park to play with the other little children. Called the "Prom King" by the moms who frequent the park, Brad seems both to appreciate and resent their ogling. When Sarah (Kate Winslet) finally approaches him, he's charmed when they make a sudden, unconsidered decision to kiss in front of the suddenly alarmed and nervous moms, who gather their children and scurry from the area as if from a violent crime scene.

Brad and Sarah are the most prominent "children" in the film, pursuing fantasies that have been dashed by their diurnal lives. He's married to a self-sufficient documentarian, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), who brings their son into bed with them at night so she can admire his perfection as he sleeps. Brad finds a sort-of solace with Sarah, who appreciates his attention. Her husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) keeps himself occupied with a porn site ("Slutty Kay"), from which he orders a pair of red-and-white panties to wear over his face as he jerks off.

For Sarah, Brad provides something like romance. When a friend invites her to join her ladies' book club to read Madame Bovary , Sarah initially begs off; in college, she read it as a "misogynist text." Now, however, it reveals layers and layers of passion. Emma's "tragic flaw," Sarah sees now, is that she wants her freedom from an oppressive marriage, in a universe where she's condemned to settle. "It's about women's choices," she declares. Madame Bovary is "reclaiming her sexuality." The blonde across the room sniffs, "Is that a nice way of saying she's a slut?"

It's a point. And yet, Sarah needs to see her romance as sincere, fulfilling her childhood dreams. "There's something beautiful and even heroic in her rebellion," she tells the ladies, her own sincere but also deceptive face huge in close-up. Sarah can't tell her nonfriends she's having an affair, of course, as that would be scandalous, but she can feel it for herself, and knows that her analysis, as an English major, is perceptive and acute. The film cuts to another tryst with Brad, who resists her efforts to picture and so, compete with Kathy. She's a "knockout," he admits, "but beauty is overrated." The narrator explains: "Brad had meant this to be comforting. Only someone who took his own beauty for granted could say something so stupid."

In fact, Brad and Sarah are caught up by similar self-delusions, each wanting to recover youthful hope. They spend their summertime afternoons at the public pool, their children, like most, entering into a friendship ordained by their parents' convenience. During one such afternoon, their stories intersect briefly with Ronnie's. He arrives at the pool, dons his flippers and snorkel, then slips into the water, his fishbelly white form scrawny and scary. As parents recognize him, they call for their kids, who scramble from the water like the kids in Jaws . The cops arrive to remove Ronnie from the premises. And so the children are protected.

This is the catch and the claim in Little Children , that the lines between adults and children are poorly defined. Parents pursue juvenile desires citing the "protection" of children as the ultimate and unassailable rationale. If Little Children is pedantic and sometimes smug in its judgments, it is also painful.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)