by MATTHEW HAYS

Todd Field seems more than a bit contradictory as he sits down to discuss his latest feature, Little Children. At the Toronto International Film Festival, Field’s film has been heralded as a thematic cousin to Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering; these two films make for an uneasy balance of contemporary urban or suburban angst (à la American Beauty) combined with desperate post-9/11 grasps at optimism.

If that doesn’t sound contradictory enough, imagine Field’s own position: He was the indie darling in 2001 when his feature directorial debut, In the Bedroom, set off critical radars everywhere and garnered a handful of Oscar nods. That realistic melodrama had a family grappling with a death in the family. Now, the actor-cum-director is back, with an assured film—another melodrama, again from literary adaptation—but that is still a test of his skill as a filmmaker. Thus Field appears both confident and insecure at once.

“You know what? It gets harder,” he says, when asked about the move up several rungs in the budget ladder. “I mean, the expectations are still the same. But the problem with more money, which we had here, is that you have to answer to more people. You have to deal with unions, you have to keep people quiet, you have to feed more people. It’s like moving around an army. Think of the difference between The Magnificent Seven and Platoon: just because one has more bodies doesn’t mean you’re going to make a better film.”

Indeed, Little Children looks a bit more slick and expensive than In the Bedroom, but the cast remains a tight ensemble. Kate Winslet plays an unhappy wife stuck in suburbia; Patrick Wilson plays an unhappy husband also stuck in the same ’hood. The two meet up at the local park while walking their wee children. Sparks fly, and the two are soon boffing each other. Meanwhile, Field gives us insights into the tortured lives of various other residents of the community, including a suspected pedophile (played superbly by Jackie Earle Haley). The title of the work is itself often cringe-worthy in its literal-ness: the central adult characters are tending to children, but are still not grown up themselves (get it?).

Suburban suspicions

But the most noticeable shift from first to second feature is Field’s tone. In the Bedroom was rooted in a stark, gloomy realism. With Little Children, Field set about reflecting the satirical sheen of Tom Perrotta’s novel. “I read Tom’s book in galleys, and I was very excited about it. Initially though, I was a bit suspicious about it because it was set in suburbia. I felt like that had been done before and probably done too much.”

Stylistically, Little Children sneaks up on you. Initially, it appears to be another rumination on suburbia, but then it morphs into something unexpected. What audiences might have a tougher time swallowing is the film’s tone, which, as Field acknowledges, is a high-wire act. On the one hand, the script is full of satirical flourishes, including a deadpan narration that punctuates the film, often hilariously. But then, at certain points (in particular at the climax), Field expects us to get on board and care about these characters as if they’d never been parodies. This is not always easy.

“The satirical melodrama is one of my favourite genres,” Field states. “I love films like Tom Jones or Barry Lyndon. But it’s a genre that’s rarely embraced by filmmakers. It can polarize people. We all know what’s real—that’s easy enough to identify. ‘He got it right, that’s real!’ Or comedy—it’s big, it’s broad. When you’re dealing with satirical melodrama you’re straddling both sides. It’s harder to recognize, and harder to tie down. You’re either going to have a conversation with it as an audience, or you’re not.”

But Field must be commended for taking on a truly daunting task and making something heartfelt his second time around. There have certainly been other offers: “After In the Bedroom, people started sending me scripts that would have to be budgeted at $75–$100 million. After I’d just made a film budgeted at under $2-million! So it was a bit surreal. When I read a script, I can tell when it’s got Madison Avenue all over it. My criteria is that I make films that I feel I have to make.”

Little Children opens Friday, Nov. 17

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