Film / Reviews
Review: Little Men
Little Men (PG)
USA 2016 83 mins Dir: Ira Sachs Cast: Theo Taplitz, Michael Barbieri, Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Paulina Garcia, Alfred Molina, Talia Balsam
Two films in succession centred on New York housing issues? Ira Sachs spoils us. In the superior Love Is Strange, a middle-class gay couple’s lives are thrown into turmoil when the financial consequences of homophobia force them to sell their nice Manhattan apartment and live separately. The slight, gentle, refreshingly brief Little Men is driven by gentrification, though empathetic Sachs is scrupulously careful not to demonise any of his characters. At its core are superb, naturalistic performances by young newcomers Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri.
When struggling actor Brian Jardine’s (Greg Kinnear) elderly father carks it, he inherits the old man’s modest Brooklyn brownstone. This comes with Chilean immigrant single mother Leonor (Paulina Garcia), who runs a ground-floor dress shop. Brian moves in with his psychotherapist wife Kathy (Jennifer Ehle) and their sensitive, withdrawn, somewhat awkward 13-year-old aspiring artist son, Jake (Taplitz). Although Jake normally struggles to make friends, he bonds swiftly with Leonor’s swaggering, confident, streetwise offspring Tony (Barbieri). But as the two boys form a firm chalk’n’cheese friendship based on their mutual love of computer games, the adults’ initially cordial relationship soon turns sour. Leonor pays a fraction of the market rent in this upcoming neighbourhood. Egged on by his pushy sister Audrey (Talia Balsam), who wants her share of the inheritance, Brian reluctantly proposes an increase that she can ill afford to pay.
Sachs serves up real, nuanced, flawed adult characters here, laying bare the class divide without imposing an agenda. The passive-aggressive Jardines might be middle class, but they’re hardly loaded. Prickly Leonor is no noble downtrodden stereotype, refusing to discuss the issue and reminding conflicted sad sack Brian pointedly that she was closer to his father than he ever was. In another telling, superbly played scene, well-meaning Kathy clod-hoppingly suggests to Leonor that she could mediate a solution, since she’s “trained in conflict resolution”. But the film really belongs to the adolescent twosome, whose firm friendship with a light frisson of sexual attraction is endangered by forces beyond their control just as they begin to negotiate the adult world. This is a subtle, delicate, minimalist drama that eschews showy displays of emotion and perhaps lacks the dramatic heft of Love Is Strange, but is certain to be appreciated by all who make the effort to discover its charms.
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
