[S]he confirmed that Sarah, a neglected wife and a disaffected mother, was not an easy fit, especially for an actress who believes “it’s important to learn to love the person that you’re playing.”I hear the movie is great, by the way, the best of the year. And I've loved Kate Winslet since her first movie, one of my all-time favorites, "Heavenly Creatures." But I was motivated to break out that passage because I'm fascinated by the divorcee's contempt for the woman who stays in a bad marriage and chooses the problematic form of self-expression that is adultery.
“Sarah,” she said, “has some qualities that I didn’t necessarily respect or like. The way she conducts herself in this sort of lonely life of hers” — having a torrid affair with an equally unhappy stay-at-home father, played by Patrick Wilson — “is not something that at face value I could really understand.”
... [S]he was thrown by the character’s willingness to stay put in a bad marriage — Ms. Winslet herself quickly bailed out of her first marriage, to James Threapleton, then an assistant director, before settling down three and a half years ago with the director Sam Mendes.
Comparing herself to Sarah, she said: “I cannot sit back and just say, ‘Oh, well, this is my lot.’ If I don’t like something, I go off and I fix it. It was really, really hard for me to dampen down those impulses in myself, and to stop myself being frustrated with her.”
January 7, 2007
"The way she conducts herself in this sort of lonely life of hers is not something that at face value I could really understand."
Kate Winslet talks about her role in "Little Children":
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11 comments:
"But I was motivated to break out that passage because I'm fascinated by the divorcee's contempt for the woman who stays in a bad marriage and chooses the problematic form of self-expression that is adultery."
Why is this fascinating?
Isn't divorce from a bad marriage both more honest and more honorable than remaining in a bad marriage while committing adultery?
Or is the "self-expression" of divorce morally equal to the "self-expression" of adultery?
Or does the term "self-expression" deem morality a quaint notion unworthy of considering these different choices, er, forms of "self-expression"? Or is it that a divorcee has no standing to question the choices of an adulterer?
Color me confused, albeit not by the talent of Kate Winslet.
For the record, my wife loved LITTLE CHILDREN, but says that the best of the year is CHILDREN OF MEN.
Getting a divorce is not fixing it. It is ending it.
It is "ending" the marriage, but "fixing" your life.
Go see it, it is an excellent movie! I love her and she is amazing and the guy is hot
But I just saw the best movie of the year-Children of God-loved it!
In my guise as once semi-professional film critic, yeah right (I was only the film critic for the Oxford U student rag), and my already well-known love of film, let me just say that I absolutely loathed Little Children. It was insipid, dull, and self-righteous -- like unpopular kids pointing out the very real faults of the popular kids, but without an iota of sense of humour.
I wrote a review on Yahoo! Movies. I most recently reviewed the equally fraught Notes from a Scandal, which was a more interesting character study.
As for Kate, despite the general drip-dry no-cling humour of The Holiday, she was the best thing in it (hey Ruth Anne!).
Come Oscars 2006-7, it'll be Mirren, Dench and Winslet up for Best Actress. Again.
Cheers,
Victoria
the best of the year is CHILDREN OF MEN.
Exquisite taste.
I know lists are a bit twee, but so far my year's Top 10 Films are:
1. Pan's Labyrinth
2. Half-Nelson
3. The Queen
4. Children of Men
5. The Lives of Others
6. The King of Scotland
7. L'Enfant
8. 49 Up
9. United 93
10. Shortbus
Note: I haven't, as yet, seen Letters from Iwo Jima (I didn't like Flags of our Fathers), or David Lynch's Inland Empire.
I especially look forward to the latest 'down the rabbit hole' production from David Lynch.
Cheers,
Victoria
Sorry I meant to say the best movie I saw this year was "Children of Men" not "Children of God"-my mistake.
But I do recommend that all of you go see Children of Men-it is one of the coolest movies I have seen in a long time. The best part of the movie is the cinematography-like nothing I have ever seen before.
Hearing Kate Winslet's "fix-it" argument regarding life reminds me of the Lynn Redgrave commercial where she proclaims that she "refuses to die" from breast cancer.
(BTW, I've vowed not to be bothered by stupid commercials, but damn if it keeps happening.)
That's great and all, but sometimes life just gives you a kick that can't be "fixed."
Kate Winslet is my favorite actress, and I really look forward to seeing Little Children when it comes out on dvd. I never got to see it in the theaters, because it never came to Madison, at least as far as I know. But its based on a book by an author named Tom Perrotta, who is in my opinion one of the great little-known authors writing today. He also wrote the novel Election, and a fantastic book of short stories called Bad Haircut. FYI, he's definitely worth checking out.
I never got to see it in the theaters, because it never came to Madison, at least as far as I know.
It hasn't come down to SoFla either (I have my ways, though) YET, but since it's much more a January kind of film, when the Oscar-buzz also-rans turn up as slow as treacle, I would counsel patience, Wade.
I saw Perfume: A Story of a Murderer months ago (again, with my sneaky quasi-critic ways), and it only just opened in SoFla two weeks after its scheduled limited debut.
Speaking of books, read Patrick Süsskind's original novel, Das Parfum.
Like Tom Perrotta, the adaptation didn't do it half the justice.
Cheers,
Victoria
If not for the sake of children, people stay in bad marriages for financial reasons.
That's defensible if the supported spouse is faithful. If he or she isn't, "financial reasons" amounts to nothing more than wanting to live like you were single while making some poor sucker pay your bills.
Keep it in your pants or get a divorce and a job -- these are the options.
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