Little Children

In a comfortable New England suburb, Sarah and Brad, two stifled married parents, drift into an affair during long afternoons at the local playground and pool. Around them the neighbourhood is gripped by fear and vigilantism over a recently paroled sex offender who has moved back in with his mother.

The film braids suburban adultery with the psyche of a man defined by his transgression, working throughout with repression, shame, and the return of what has been disavowed. It asks how a community locates its own forbidden wishes in a designated outsider. It received Academy Award nominations for Adapted Screenplay and two acting categories in 2007, and is based on the novel Little Children by Tom Perrotta.