Providing richness of detail and metaphor, elegantly blueprinted themes and impressive mastery of a constantly shifting tone, "Little Children" does just that. Kate Winslet is Sarah, a housewife who views her shallow neighbors (women who can declare a spa treatment "an intense spiritual experience") as sociological specimens instead of peers. Meeting another misfit parent (Patrick Wilson's Brad, known to the other housewives as "the Prom King") at the local playground, she slowly enters a relationship that will leave the two adults as heedless of consequences as the children who surround them, kids who act variously as victims, witnesses, anchors and catalysts for the story's action.

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