Little Children

If you're looking for a movie to cheer you up, Little Children is not the one to go to. But if you want a movie that will keep playing in your head for days, then this is a good one to try.

I found it really bleak and chilling and disturbing, and I have very mixed emotions about the various characters. I had read in a review that it was a comedy - it isn't! There are some funny bits in it and there is a satirical voice-over commentary, but it's a story about a small American town, one hot summer (and you can almost feel the oppressive dead heat), where a bored housewife and a bored househusband are having an affair, while the town goes into panic mode when a convicted paedophile comes home after 2 years in jail for indecent exposure. Definitely not a comedy! There is a reference to Madame Bovary in the movie, and it's a very good parallel - the feeling of boredom and oppression with their lives, and the desperate, futile, attempt to break away from it, did remind me of Madame Bovary.

Kate Winslet is one of the main characters in it and she is wonderful in her role, so absorbed in herself and how miserable she is with her life that she doesn't see her daughter, who is longing for her love and affection. Very different from the Kate Winslet in Titanic! I love it that she does such offbeat movies. I loved her in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I'm finding it hard to describe this movie, but I would highly recommend it. Just don't go on a day you're feeling in any way low or emotionally vulnerable.