Little Children vs Hard Candy

As Sarah sits in the park while her daughter plays, she has to remind herself to think like an anthropologist around the other mothers. The other mothers are gossipy, shallow, and frustratingly prepared and responsible. Don’t you hate that, when you meet someone awful and then they’ve always got a pen and a full tank of gas, and their taxes are done in January? Nothing I hate worse than a jerk with his shit together. Sarah feels the same way. She can’t remember to bring snacks to the park, or get her daughter to ride in a car seat, so the notion that these harpies on the bench across from hers have their days planned to the second and still have time remaining to gossip about the single jock dad who brings his son to the park every day drives Sarah nuts.

And so she starts an affair with the dad. She has her reasons. It doesn’t hurt that the other mothers covet and fear the dad, nicknaming him Prom King, but refusing to acknowledge him directly. Sarah’s home life is a disaster. Her husband is a bore, not to mention an internet porn addict. She has no hobbies, and has long abandoned the intellectual pursuits that defined her during her grad-school days. Sarah’s in a funk, but I observed her like an anthropologist from my seat, and I could tell immediately that it wouldn’t last long. Sarah’s still young, vibrant, beautiful and interesting. Most importantly, she’s played by Kate Winslet, who, if she isn’t the best actress working today, certainly has the best ones looking over their shoulders.

The Prom King in question is Brad (Patrick Wilson), a cool stay-at-home dad, who keeps putting off studying for the Bar Exam (he’s already flunked it twice). Brad is also in a bit of a funk, playing football in the middle of the night, pining for a youth that could have been spent skateboarding, and of course, sleeping with Sarah. At first, their relationship is platonic and functional. They help watch each others kids at the park and the public pool. At home, Brad’s got a prom queen, his wife (Jennifer Connelly), a documentary filmmaker who runs the household, pays the bills, and stays as calm, driven and mature as she wishes Brad could be.

Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly give precise, funny, heartbreaking performances. Each character has a desperation, a wanting, that they leave unmentioned, and each has a very serious unmentioned anger as well. These are such well-written and performed characters, they live in the movie as unique, even though we’ve seen these types before in The Ice Storm and American Beauty. Little Children is decidedly more modern than The Ice Storm, and light years more graceful than American Beauty. Connelly has a tiny window of time to dart her eyes across a table, then drop her fork and look under it. In these two gestures, we see Annette Bening’s entire American Beauty house-cleaning freak-out, as well as her collapse into the closet, and Connelly barely even blinks. Could it be that Little Children has a gifted director? Indeed it does.

Todd Field has only directed two films: In the Bedroom and Little Children. Quietly, on tiny budgets with hard-working actors, Field has created a body of work that includes more shades of humanity, more crises of love and death and faith, than most directors manage in an entire career. Little Children is stylish (Connelly is lit like the movie star she is, the film is narrated in the manner of wildlife shows on Discovery, and often Winslet and Wilson’s clothing can be a little…youthful.), but packs as much sorrow and regret as Field’s previous piece. There’s another subplot, one that I won’t delve into too deeply, involving a presumed child-molester, his mother, and an out-of-work cop who wants him out of the neighborhood. They’re played by Jackie Earle Hayley, Phyllis Somerville, and Noah Emmerich, respectively. You will think, several times, that you know where their story is going. You don’t. (Even if you’ve read the book.)

In Little Children, Sarah mourns that her life is one of searching, of wanting more, of wandering what options exist for her that she might never find. Brad wants the glory and power he felt as a young man, like those skateboarders down the street. Ronnie (Hayley) wants a nice girlfriend who won’t tell on him for doing all the things he’s done, and wanting all the horrible things he wants. The characters of Hard Candy aren’t much different, really. Hell, one of them’s even played by Patrick Wilson.

Patrick Wilson is at an interesting stage in his career. He’s getting the interesting movies actors say they want, and he’s knocking them out of the park. On the other hand, describing who he is to another movie watcher is like trying to picture in your head where one of those tiny countries are after their names have been changed for the tenth time. He’s…you know, he was that guy in Angels in America? You know, he was in Phantom of the Opera? Remember? He’s that country that used to be called Liberia. That guy.

Soon, though, you’ll be able to recommend Little Children to your friends by saying, “It’s got Patrick Wilson. You know, the perv from Hard Candy.”

Hard Candy is like Death in the Maiden, only your fourteen year-old niece has seen it. If you’re smart, you will too. Hard Candy is one of those movies that double as a tiny pop-art road mark; it’s got a plot that has undoubtedly been the plot of an urban legend or two, and despite not being truly great (don’t give it much thought later, or you’ll hate yourself a little for falling for it), it’s obviously a movie people will be watching for years to come.

Ellen Page is Hayley, a brilliant young girl who is obviously too smart and worldly for friends her own age. She’s one of those movie characters that usually become a grifter with an old man. Thirty years ago, she would have been played by Jodie Foster; twenty, Winona Ryder; ten, Natalie Portman. Hayley, however, isn’t interested in being a little buddy. She’s hunting for pedophiles. And, it appears she’s found one in Jeff (Wilson), who is also smart and worldly, and wouldn’t you know it: twice Hayley’s age. They met on the internet. Charming, no?

They share tiramisu, music, and Jeff buys Hayley a cool t-shirt. He’s a photographer, and before long, they’re back at his place, and Hayley’s posing for Jeff’s camera, while they share drinks.

Something wonderful and awful happens next. It’s a devious, terrifying plot twist, and I wouldn’t spoil it for the world. Hayley is not who she seems at all. Jeff…Jeff might be who he seems, and he might not. That is unclear to us, and provides Hard Candy with such a perverse rush, I was tempted to hide my eyes during most of the last half hour. Hard Candy is not for the faint of heart, the stupid, or, you know, anyone like Jeff.

Hard Candy was directed by David Slade, who puts his music video background to nice use. It’s staged like an action movie—when the characters venture outside we’re surprised that Jeff’s house isn’t enormous, like the skyscraper in Die Hard—but is surprisingly discreet (the harshest details are kept just below the frame, thankfully). Hard Candy is one of those movies that could fall apart if it were even a minute longer (and in fact, there is, I think, one minute too many. A scene with the otherwise lovely Sandra Oh nearly flips the movie off the tracks.). It’s a two-person movie, which makes the performances seem that much more intense and impressive (even Death and the Maiden has three actors). Page, like her character, is poised, mature, and witty beyond her years. Wilson, as with many underrated and not-yet well known actors, is great, and gives Page his undivided attention for the entire movie. Of course, since much of it is spent tied to a table with a giant bag of ice on his balls, he doesn’t always have much of a choice. Uh, I mean, uh, spoiler.

Little Children: A
Hard Candy: B+