Based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, Todd Field's Little Children seems to come from the perspective of someone who has an opinion about suburban life without having logged much time there. Much like its hero, a bright stay-at-home mother played by Kate Winslet, the film views this squeaky-clean landscape as a hornet's nest of judgmental backbiting and dirty little secrets, a suffocating place for people of real passion and substance. Yet the film mostly gets away with its reductive point of view, thanks to an ideal push-and-pull of sensibilities: Perrotta's witty observational touches, evident in great novels like The Wishbones and Election, helps leaven Field's direction, which has all the assurance and gravity of his debut feature In The Bedroom. Together, they're able to sell a scenario that would seem fraudulent in lesser hands.
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