todd field's LITTLE CHILDREN (2006)

it's been a long time since a movie affected me quite so much as Little Children, and days later i still can't put my finger on why; the film as a whole is dour, uncomfortable and a little overwrought, focusing sometimes lazily (though always eloquently) on the same bourgeoise malaise done to death by inferior but more accessible films like American Beauty. on the other hand, though, Field and Perotta's emotional and psychological incisions fearlessly graze bone throughout, whether presenting a sad man resigned to his monstrousness (Jackie Earle Haley's scene in the parked car will bother me for the rest of my life) or a pair of adulterers wrestling poignantly with the situation they so carelessly careened into hopelessness and hurt. in a lot of ways Little Children recalls the work of Todd Solondz: it's self-consciously shocking, and even occasionally blase in its deviant provocation. but Solondz snickers at his characters, and at the audience squirming in their seats; Field, on the other hand, maintains an austerity even in rare moments of levity, and while Little Children may be a hard film to sit through, we aren't ever left to question what it's made us feel.