KATE WINSLET as Sarah Pierce in LITTLE CHILDREN

KATE WINSLET

KATE WINSLET as Sarah Pierce in LITTLE CHILDREN

It’s hard to find what Signature Role to place on here first. She be back for sure! Kate’s had a few already in her short career. TITANIC wouldn’t have had the sweetness and endurance of fast love fallen youth believability without her. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY wouldn’t have made …much 'sense' without her passion and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A SPOTLESS MIND wouldn’t have had reason without her fierce empathy. And remember her first film HEAVENLY CREATURES, I mean, wow, what a career! And now Hannah Schmitz in THE READER. I loved her work in it but I didn’t buy a few of the scenes and I thought older Hannah just didn’t go over. It’s a great performance still and deserving of last years Lead Actress OSCAR but I don’t think will be a Signature Role, in terms of personal best acting, in a hundred years time. Kate Winslet really sets and standard. Like Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange did in the 80’s (Well, Streep still, in the 90's, and forever) – you know when going to a Winslet film – you are getting quality. Ok, we can overlook that one Mayers Christmas film – I can’t even think of the title but she was still excellent in it. Even Meryl in that one with Rosanne Barr…SHE DEVIL, horrid (except the laundry scene, "Will someone please get the doooor") Still talking about Meryl on Kate's blog - love it.

In LITTLE CHILDREN Kate is never-better. Kate Winslet goes so deep into her character you can almost feel her nerve endings. Imagine her former passionate self. Her Sarah is a former college feminist shocked to find herself a clueless wife and mom married to a jerk (Gregg Edelman) whom she catches jerking off to the Slutty Kay Web site snorting panties – genius! I know so many young married women that want so much more than they have. That perhaps they cashed in too early and settled for something that would probably be a better fit for their mothers.

Maybe it's hard to get past the notion that, true to its title, "Little Children" is about a bunch of big babies.

Todd Field’s LITTLE CHILDREN from a screenplay by Mr. Field and Tom Perrotta, based on the novel by Mr. Perrotta, is centered on a contemporary suburban Madame Bovary, Sarah Pierce, played with full-bodied grace and gusto by Kate.

The laughs in this film catch in your throat in Little Children. Sarah is not a perfect mother – she is a deeply flawed woman but Winslet does something a extra. She keeps moving, trying, (and thinking in the scene – what’s my next move? , every scene builds on itself – very difficult to do on a film set – Kate must have really mapped this one out carefully) and push her secret desires for her new love and become the woman she used to be. The film is more than a moral fable about the traps we set for ourselves by not growing up. Ms. Winslet performs a high-wire act that balances hard truth and hardcore tenderness. Most recent performances fade from the memory, this one sticks. The book club scene where she talks about ‘Bovary’ as herself could have been the signature moment of her performance but Todd Field threw the camera profile instead of getting up right in there on her face. I think I went into convulsions when I saw this in the theatre because that was her big moment and we only got half of it.

She brings to the character a quality like the film itself - a unique subtle non judgemental quality all its own, equivalent to a sense of floating through life. She’s somnalbulistic and in much need to wake up and pay attention. “What about your child!” I wanted to scream. But we recognize her faults cause we all have them or have been there. I was there a couple times. After things take some rather nightmarish turns, deep emotional charges go off, and the film concludes on a note that will likely make you wonder whether you've just seen a snide critique of middle-class values or an unforgiving argument in their favor. When she grabs her little girl at the end – you know that she’s going to look out for her from now on. Or we hope at least. But most likely it will happen again when she finds someone new attractive.

This performance will keep coming back again and again – just you wait and see…Absolutely brilliant acting. I think having the great source material as well as the script - this actress goes over every word and distills her character's down to the bone. Like with REVOLUTIONARY ROAD - playing conflicted, imperfect character's are not easy, but Kate is the one to 'go to' if your female character isn't cookie cutter perfect with simple objectives. Complex women = Kate Winslet.

She once stated that “After each movie script I read, I always think, how different can I possibly be?... Is this going to challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make me love my job more than I already do?" Well…there you have it. She’s a true modern day movie goddess, thank heaven!