little men ( 2016 film )
michael barbieri and theo taplitz in little men. photograph: pr / sundance film festival
reviewed at sundance film festival (premieres), jan. 25, 2016. running time: 85 min .
* this article appears in the july 25, 2016 issue of new york magazine .
in his new film
little men ,
which premiered earlier this year at the sundance film festival and is now playing in los angeles, two families collide .
little men builds gradually and honestly, eavesdropping on real conversations tinged with anger and sometimes bitterness .
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jennifer ehle, left, michael barbieri, mauricio zacharias, paulina garcia, ira sachs, theo taplitz and greg kinnear from the film
little men .
( jay l. clendenin / los angeles times )
this film is very different from the general run of ingratiating middlebrow indies that pop up on screen periodically, drenched with implausibility, sentimentality and lame bet - hedging humour. like his previous film love is strange, sachs’s little men is composed with scrupulous observational intelligence and care. it is really engaging .
ira sachs’ “little men” is a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. it won’t change the world, but it does understand it — far more insightfully than all the formula blockbusters that will be competing for the same few screens where such a quiet and tenderly observed movie might hope to find [ … ]
michael barbieri, left, and theo taplitz from
little men ,
in the l. a. times photo and video studio at the sundance film festival on jan. 25. (jay l. clendenin / los angeles times )
a number of reviews have nevertheless grouped
little men
with
keep the lights on
and
love is strange
as a continuing examination of new york city in transition .
his latest film, little men, uses a story about two young boys whose friendship is threatened by their warring parents to offer a piercing examination of gentrification in america. sachs’ approach is so humane, and his characters so fully rendered, that an agenda never announces itself; instead, sachs’ worldview seeps into you. he’s that skilled a film - maker .
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still, the main resemblance between the seagull and little men is structural: little men feels like a play. if everyone speaks in a way that seems ever so slightly stilted — injecting exposition or philosophy into moments that don' t necessarily provoke them — it works. the film feels rangy and stylized, but every scene sharpens to an odd and unexpected point. (a scene in which kinnear loses his temper in the car with jennifer ehle and the two boys is especially effective. )
it’s not an autobiographical film, but it’s the city and the experiences that i know .
little indie film that has strong young characters. the film is a drama and doesn' t get lost in the hollywood melodrama world. the acting is top notch, just the pacing is a little off, never giving us the character drama that it promises. seeing the 98 percent from critics is disappointing, this film while being good is not at a prestige rating. the divide between audience and critics is clearly starting to grow, why need critics anymore? 27 / 04 / 2017 .
dickon hinchliffe’s perfectly judged score percolates throughout. the cumulative effect of the film is heart - rending .
big little lies was alluring, but sharp objects is intoxicating, thanks in large part to its direction and editing .
little men is in dialogue with a lot of literature — it' s named for louisa may alcott' s book of the same name, and edgar allan poe' s
annabel lee
makes a major appearance — but its main intertext is chekhov' s play the seagull. the male principals in little men (like many of the main characters in that play) all want to be artists or actors, and the film is at least as much about artistry and anxiety — about freedom and loss and the parts of existence you sacrifice to your ambition — as it is about anything else .
ira sachs' s lean but potent film is the kind of story that works wonderfully well on its own .
proud that a fellow jew had the ḥutspâ (חֻצְפָּה) to make this film. fucking gentrification, man .
you’ve never seen two young actors give such breakthrough performances like the two stars at the heart of little men, an intimate gem of a film from director ira sachs (keep the lights on, love is strange). sachs and his regular co - writer mauricio zacharias, craft a film of serious pleasure, filled with real, messy characters whose inner thoughts and feelings don’t always necessarily come through when they speak. it requires you to lean in close and pay attention .
a sweet and maddeningly incomplete portrait of a friendship, little men concludes as unexpectedly as the friendship it tracks; the ending is small and oblique and punishing. if you' re anything like me, you might leave the theater hating the film just a little for what it showed and — crucially — for what it didn' t. but the more i thought about my resentment, the more fitting it seemed: adult drama is so often the cause of the endings kids don' t get .
little men jangles with warmth and loss, and if it tells a story about new york we' ve heard many times before, the story it tells about childhood - about how people turn a corner and vanish - stings at least as much as it sings .
little men ,
which co - stars jennifer ehle, talia balsam and alfred molina, is the third film sachs has co - written with mauricio zacharias, after 2012' s
keep the lights on
and 2014' s
love is strange .
sachs won the grand jury prize at sundance in 2005 for his second feature ,
forty shades of blue .
the film is supposed to be actual but angola is a nation since november, 11 1975, not a portuguese colony .
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the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
yet jake and tony’s lives are balanced with those of their parents. their final scene has something desperately sad: it is where the film achieves a strangely literary quality, like an exceptionally powerful short story. film - making this intelligent is such a treat .
roger ebert was born on this day in 1942, and died a little over five years ago. i owe a good part of my success…
the film is supposed to be actual but angola is a nation since november, 11 1975, not a portuguese colony. see more »
between the duffer brothers' amazingly successful and creepy netflix series stranger things and ira sachs' new film little men (out august 5), this summer feels rich in ambitious, dreamy, and sad coming - of - age projects that let younger actors shine. childhood is back to being a subject directors and writers take up with some care, and the results are beautiful if — frankly — a little odd. that' s as it should be: childhood is weird, and the peculiar tilt of the field on which kids meet is a huge part of the drama of growing up and growing apart .
tulip talks to god, and it’s not a pleasant conversation, and we learn a little more custer family history in one of season three’s funniest episodes .
it' s not an autobiographical film, but it' s the city and the experiences that i know ,
said sachs .
everyone is really just trying to figure out how to get by. and losing sometimes. and this film is a personal view of that .
on the surface, “ little men ” is a movie about gentrification, hinging on a brooklyn building (set up with an apartment upstairs and a small shop down below) passed from one generation to the next, where the tenant renting the street - level space gets pinched by the neighborhood’s trendy new identity. but no one goes to the movies to watch stories of gentrification (just ask “nasty baby” director sebastian silva). though sachs’ observations do succeed in personalizing the phenomenon, the reason we go — indeed, the reason we care — is because “little men” is also a story about love, and as sachs has poignantly noted before, love is strange .
little men
has a melodramatic set - up out of 1930s agitprop theatre (landlords vs. tenants). melodrama for some reason has a bad reputation, seeming to suggest soap operas or three - hanky weepers, but melodrama has always been one of the most effective genres for social and economic criticism because down on the ground things really
the ballad of narayama
is a japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. what a space it opens…
its smallness makes it grand and moving. these are the things, these little moments, decisions and consequences that most human lives are made of, after all .
keep the lights on
was deeply rooted in a relationship from sachs' own life, the tale of a tortured, toxic love affair, while
love is strange
was inspired by family members. though
little men
is based on bits and pieces from its writers' own experiences, it is less rooted in real incidents .
michael barbieri was accepted at new york' s fiorello h. laguardia high school of music & art and performing arts after the film premiered. see more »
ira sachs ’ “ little men ” is a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. it won’t change the world, but it does understand it — far more insightfully than all the formula blockbusters that will be competing for the same few screens where such a quiet and tenderly observed movie might hope to find a home. most of those screens will likely be in new york, where the story takes place, focusing on a category of person virtually invisible in that big city — not a minority (although it has that, too), but children — privileging lives not yet dedicated to work with an importance the commerce - driven metropolis seldom comprehends, and doing so in a way that only adults can fully appreciate .
in the tender final image of ira sachs' love is strange, a teenage boy experiencing loss for the first time coasts off down a manhattan street on his skateboard. at a key point in the director' s beautiful new film, little men, an introverted 13 - year - old glides on rollerblades around brooklyn neighborhoods that, until recently, he explored with perhaps his first real friend. a sense of poetic continuity connects these two fine - grained portraits of new york life in other ways, too, even though the narratives are unrelated .
originally i think the film was called' silent treatment' and the fact those boys are on strike against their parents, that was just a great idea ,
he added .
but when that idea is hatched in the story, it is the most missable, little, dismissive moment. and that' s how it would happen .
the film is quiet but vibrant, and ira sachs does a lovely job coaxing images to life out of stillness, and tenderness out of situations that might seem barren of it .
“little men” is often at its best when it cuts through the natural optimism of its younger characters. one of the most fascinating dynamics is that between their mothers — when jake’s mom (a grounded jennifer ehle) visits tony’s and tries on a dress, it seems as though a shared feminine or maternal bond might help them to cut through the bullshit. the toxicity that eventually settles between them is damning .
that quibble aside, this is a lovely thing. barbieri is a fizzy, charismatic delight, and taplitz complements his verve with a precise and nerdy awkwardness that collapses spectacularly when it needs to. little men jangles with warmth and loss, and if it tells a story about new york we' ve heard many times before, the story it tells about childhood — about how people turn a corner and vanish — stings at least as much as it sings .
“little men” is a modest movie, maybe even a touch too modest to grapple with every aspect of its central crisis, but sachs’ unwavering humanism reverberates with twice the scale of “suicide squad. ” if the film is weighted towards the white kid, and ends (with tremendous grace) by focusing on what he might take away from another person’s trauma, there’s a good reason for that: the gentrified don’t need to learn the human cost of being displaced — the onus is on the gentrifiers to recognize the true price of pricing people out. “you’ve gotta learn to let go, ” jake’s dad tells him. sure, but you have to learn how to hold on, as well .
sachs' best films — and this ranks among them — are a careful accumulation of small, acutely observed details. they add up to reveal a much larger humanistic picture that touches with unerring restraint on social issues as well as personal themes. in this case, that includes gentrification and class inequality, but also coming of age, loneliness and, arguably, inchoate sexuality. there' s a finite theatrical audience for miniaturist work of such subtlety and intelligence, but little men deserves to find it .
the two young actors playing jake and tony are so natural that it feels like they strolled in off the street and started improvising .
little men
does not condescend to ambitious serious children. tony takes an acting class in what appears to be the meisner technique, and seeing him in action during a repetition exercise (a great scene) is important because it shows tony' s desires are not theoretical. he wants it. tony is fearless; tony is easily intimate with other people; tony is open .
in manhattan, film - maker erik bonds with closeted lawyer paul after a fling. as their relationship becomes one fueled by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries while being true to himself .
michael barbieri and theo taplitz give truly outstanding performances as tony and jake: a delicate, nuanced friendship – tony is bold, confident, charming and humorous, the extrovert to jake’s introvert. in a way it is like first love, and the film suggests that this might be something more than friendship, but probably isn’t, and there are in any case no cliches and no stereotypes. tony and jake might under other circumstances occupy the entire space of the film: it could have been a kind of platonic version of edmund white’s a boy’s own story, and there is a kind of understated, almost subliminal gay sensibility to the film that is a part of its shrewdness and emotional acuity .
a standout scene in the film involves kinnear' s character bryan and garcía' s character leonor, whom he tries to evict. it' s a treat to watch kinnear at his most skillfully awkward opposite an enormous talent like garcía. (american viewers may know garcía from narcos, the 33, and the highly praised film gloria. chileans will know her from — among other things — the chilean mini - series los archivos del cardenal, where she played mónica spencer. )
a small and quiet film with great performances from the cast - especially the two young leads jake (theo taplitz) and tony (michael barbieri) - who become friends when jake’s grandfather dies and his family move into a brooklyn apartment above a shop leased by tony’s mother .
what works less well — and this is very minor, but it bears mentioning — are the accents. i wish more films and tv shows would incorporate spanish the way little men does, but i also wish they did it with the care we take with accents in english, not letting australian pass for british or british for american. garcía' s accent is obviously chilean, but the same cannot be said for her
chilean friend
hernán (played by alfred molina). molina' s a fabulous actor, but he can' t pass for chilean when he speaks spanish and should not have been asked to try .
at the end of stephen king' s
it ,
narrator bill denbrough muses :
he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be a grown - up and able to consider the mystery of childhood... its beliefs and desires... it' s nice... to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love .
the friendship of jake and tony in
little men
carries that kind of bittersweet weight. jake and tony hold hands over the growing abyss between their parents. they' re only 13 years old. do they know that relationships are fragile and need protection? do they understand how precious their friendship is, how much they need to hold onto it, how much they will miss it if it ends? these questions carry intense reverberation long after the film ends .
ira sachs’ dramas are so understated in their ambition, they’re easy to take for granted. love is strange, his 2014 film about a married gay couple’s lives capsizing after they’re forced to move out of their new york apartment, argued for marriage equality with near - subliminal stealth and power .
again, there’s that sense that tony serves as the key champion for jake’s artistic future. compare a scene in which they discuss his drawings with one in which jake, deeply wounded that some of his favorite sketches appear to have gotten thrown out during the move, is lectured by his father on how it can feel good to let things go — one moment helps set his career path in motion, while the other represents the sort of resentment jake will likely harbor for life. these are precisely the sort of moments in which sachs and screenwriter mauricio zacharias specialize, like painters whose every brushstroke represents a childhood memory that will ultimately come to define these two little men .
little men
is only 85 minutes long, and its brevity works in its favor. the mood is compressed and urgent. leonor' s 13 - year - old son tony (michael barbieri) is a gregarious, friendly kid, and he and jake strike up an unlikely friendship. they have a lot in common, mainly their ambition for their futures. jake is serious about being an artist, and tony wants to be an actor. they roam the streets, jake wobbling on roller - blades, tony zipping along on a kick scooter, brooklyn passing in a blur, music surging up around them. (these shots repeat. they are explosions of wordless emotion. )
native new yorkers watch a lot of films and television shows set in manhattan and think ,
the apartments are too big. the hallways are too wide. i had to cut my bedframe in half in order to get it up the stairs .
sachs does not have a tourist' s mentality towards the city. the apartments are cluttered and cramped, people are on top of each other in any given space. new york is (increasingly) just for the rich, with entire neighborhoods driven out of existence by rising costs. when a city forgets or ignores its own past, what else is lost in the process? loss is the air that
little men
breathes .
might have had an extreme reaction here, because this happened to be the first film i watched after the election and the last thing i wanted was to find myself sympathizing almost entirely with the white people. nor does this appear to be a problem that anyone else shares, which troubles me. * no doubt most folks zero in on sachs' intention, which is perfectly clear: he means to create a thorny, irresolvable situation, with neither party in the right and the kids caught in the crosshairs. laudable, and it' s safe to say that i' m receptive to that idea in broad outline, given that a separation is my favorite film of the century so far. but... leonor is just a horrible…
sachs would obviously rather spend time with his title characters, the burgeoning artists. barbieri at first struck me as way over the top, but his exuberance connects with his character’s. there’s a scene in an improv class in which tony and the teacher shout back and forth (it’s an exercise) that goes on and on until you think, “acting for this kid is existential. ” taplitz’s introspection, meanwhile, gives way to an explosion of tears that had me wiping away my own. the kids’ battle might be hopeless, but little men made me think of dr. johnson’s “it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are less dreadful than its extinction. ” there’s no chance of hope going extinct in jake. he’s too open — like his director .
in part because of expectations from the involvement in gay culture found in
keep the lights on
and
love is strange ,
there is an almost subliminal expectation that there will a gay story line in sachs' new film as well. and while the two teenage boys – sensitive, artistic outsiders – seem in some way attracted to one another, it is never spoken of nor acted upon .
it feels affirming ,
he said of the tribute .
it was so not a given that i would have a sustainable career. between my first and my second film was nine years, between my third and fourth films was five years. it' s like figuring out that the apparatus to make it possible was struggle. so this feels like a payoff in a way for that struggle .
this is a film about what gentrification means in real terms, and it reminded me of laurence fishburne’s speech on this subject from john singleton’s 1991 movie boyz n the hood: that gentrification is a hostile act, an exploitation of communities, and something to be resisted. yet the exploiters, the incomers, can be decent people with agonisingly good intentions, muddled by suspicions and difficult, almost feudal loyalties of their own .
at the film' s center is a microscopic close - up on early adolescence; the precise moment when two young boys stand on the precipice separating childhood innocence from their first bruising understanding of the complexities of the adult world. but it' s unlike other american screen depictions of that age, aside perhaps from some micro moments in the macro - mosaic of boyhood. sachs cites two ozu films about children in conflict with their parents as the initial spark .
the part of the feisty dressmaker downstairs was written expressly for chilean actress paulina garcia after sachs and zacharias had seen her in the 2013 film
gloria .
the two young boys however were another matter. working with casting director avy kaufman, who sachs called a
kid whisperer
for her work on filling roles in films such as
the sixth sense ,
the ice storm
and
life of pi ,
the production found taplitz in los angeles and barbieri in new york .
all of this potentially saccharine and suffocating material is handled with such natural delicacy that its full effect doesn’t hit you until after the movie is over — there are only a small handful of scenes that aren’t seen from either tony or jake’s pov, and one of the great accomplishments of sachs’ unobtrusive direction is how organically he returns viewers to the wide - eyed wonder of being a little man in a big city. he understands that childhood is inherently cinematic, and dickon hinchliffe’s plucky score shimmers with the feeling that new york looks like a completely different place when you’re four feet tall .
these are kids who are swamped in the process of becoming, kids who haven’t yet settled into the fixed understandings that plague adults. money, for one thing, is never an immediate issue between tony and jake, even as it looms over their future in the form of some slightly muddled business about the fancy high school they both want to attend. but there are certain socioeconomic realities that can’t be ignored, and as their friendship deepens and they’re forced to defend themselves against their parents’ legal woes, the film assumes a low - key “when harry met sally” vibe: can people of different classes really be friends? or does money always get in the way ?
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movies and tv shows are certified fresh with a steady tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide - release movies, 40 for limited - release movies, 20 for tv shows), including 5 reviews from top critics .
takes a compassionate look at the ways in which adult problems impact childhood friendships - - and offers another affecting new york drama from director ira sachs .
as a referendum on gentrification in brooklyn, the movie can occasionally be a bit tedious. but the entire cast is strong, especially michael barbieri .
shoring together small moments from the lives of believable characters, in a manner free of special effects and fluky plotting, and with the same dramatic and visual gusto one would apply to an epic is what independent filmmaking should be all about .
as in the films of the french new wave' s eric rohmer, nothing cloying happens here, nothing plainly engineered to elicit emotions. but emotions are elicited - moral and ethical concerns are addressed, examined, defined .
sachs is a wonderfully humane filmmaker. there are never out and out saints or demons in his films, but richly detailed, relatable lives offered for us to understand .
there are lovely moments but the end result lacks the revelation and, indeed, the resolution to find a commercial audience. a pity given all the hard work involved .
there' s no easy resolution to the story, and sachs doesn' t try to impose one. instead, he offers a wistful coda in which life, inevitably, goes on .
just fucking perfect. what astonishing performances, what remarkable writing, what specific vision. beautiful .
basically the story of a man forced to finally see the injustice around him. riley’s movie is designed to do the same thing to you. …
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when brian (greg kinnear) inherits his dead father' s brooklyn brownstone, it is a step up for him and his family. brian is an actor who doesn' t make much money, and his wife kathy (jennifer ehle) is the breadwinner. but even she doesn' t make enough to purchase a brownstone. their 13 - year - old son jake (theo taplitz) is a quiet, artistic boy who has a hard time making friends. all of that changes when they move into the brownstone. on the ground floor is a dress - making shop, there for decades, run by leonor (paulina garcia). brian' s father had liked leonor, and gave her a break on the rent, allowing her to stay even as the neighborhood gentrified around them. brian' s sister (talia balsam) thinks leonor should be evicted to make way for a more profitable tenant but brian hopes for a compromise. he attempts to open up a conversation with leonor about altering the agreement she had with his father. to say this does not go well is an understatement .
in the adult world, however, things go south fast. brian finds leonor not only intractable, but openly unfriendly. leonor goes against every unexamined assumption about
class
that brian probably didn' t even know he had. he doesn' t say this, but it is clear he expected her to be grateful that she got a break in rent for as long as she did. leonor is not grateful, not deferential to his supposed higher status. she sucks down smoke from her cigarettes like a fuming dragon. she' s not afraid to go for the jugular. as the war intensifies between the parents, the boys find themselves caught in the middle .
that important. there is nothing melodramatic about losing one' s home and livelihood. it' s life and death to the people involved. sachs' approach to melodrama is human - sized and almost casual, one of his greatest gifts as a director. his shots are careful but not over - determined or showy. he is interested in the rhythms of everyday life and how those rhythms are disrupted when events accelerate .
greg kinnear is superb as a man torn in many different directions, the most secret one being his disappointment at how his life has turned out, and his conflicting emotions when confronted with the artistic ambitions of his young son. his frustration at leonor' s attitude shows the residues of entitlement that have helped form and warp his personality. brian is ashamed that his wife supports him financially, but it' s something he can' t allow himself to say out loud .
paulina garcía gives one of the best performances of the year as leonor. to greg and kathy she is a maddening witch - like creature, but that' s only because they look through the prism at their own angle. garcía keeps her performance controlled, with surging explosions of rage and contempt churning beneath the surface. she' s terrifying. she' s terrified. when she crushes her cigarette out on the sidewalk, you can picture brian and kathy' s faces underneath her shoe. she is not a villain. she is fighting for her life .
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friendship is strange in ira sachs’ latest, as two new york teens struggle to keep their parents' personal business from sabotaging their connection .
greg kinnear, jennifer ehle, paulina garcia, michael barbieri, theo taplitz, talia balsam, maliq johnson, anthony angelo flamminio, maddison wright, mauricio bustamante, john proccacino, alfred molina. (english, spanish dialogue )
meanwhile, making friends in that way that comes so easily to children — where the perfect intersection of geography, gender and age is often all that is necessary for two otherwise completely different individuals to forge a meaningful bond — the naturally outgoing tony recognizes that jake is something of an introvert, but reaches out anyway, offering to show him around the neighborhood and later inviting him over to play video games. their bond is strong enough that once their parents start to quarrel, instead of taking sides, they stick together, giving the adults the silent treatment .
naturally, the adults need to sort out the real - estate mess, although it’s telling that nearly every scene is seen through the children’s eyes. even the exceptions, as when brian rehearses for an off off broadway revival of “the seagull” (since chekhov’s “the cherry orchard” probably would have been too on - the - nose), are significant only insofar as they interest the kids — in this case, because tony also dreams of being an actor (in real life, barbieri has pacino’s charisma, plus a new york italian accent thicker than stallone’s), and subsequently tries to convince jake to join him in applying to the laguardia high school for the performing arts .
crew: directed by ira sachs. screenplay, sachs, mauricio zacharias. camera (color), oscar duran; editors, mollie goldstein, affonso goncalves; music, dickon hinchliffe; music supervisor, jim black; production designer, alexandra schaller; costume designer, eden miller; sound designer, damian volpe; associate producers, joe aliberti, meetu chilana, grace colby, joseph g. della monica, patrick depeters, andrew drabkin, barrie golden, vanessa haroutunian, bryan hughes, cathleen ihasz, nicole ihasz, joe kobzan, jisun jamie lee, jeffery
dadsrights
leving, michael messmer, tracy scott nadler, andy pargh, larry tsai, mandy ward, walter j. wiacek; assistant director, eric berkal; casting, avy kaufman .
with: greg kinnear, jennifer ehle, paulina garcia, michael barbieri, theo taplitz, talia balsam, maliq johnson, anthony angelo flamminio, maddison wright, mauricio bustamante, john proccacino, alfred molina. (english, spanish dialogue )
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theo taplitz is a remarkable discovery as 13 - year - old jake, an artistic loner who strikes up an unlikely friendship with tony (michael barbieri, equally impressive), after jake’s grandfather dies. the death results in jake’s father, brian (greg kinnear), inheriting the building in which tony’s mother, leonor (paulina garcia), operates a quaint clothing store. unbeknownst to the two boys, brian and his wife, kathy (jennifer ehle), have intentions to raise the rent significantly for leonor; as brian’s sister (talia balsam) firmly relays to her brother, the property is worth $ 4, 000 more per month than leonor pays. the resulting tensions this stirs up gradually come to affect the children’s lives .
the bond struck by jake and tony forms the heart of the picture – and to watch that connection come under fire from circumstances that are out of their control is deeply moving .
the parents, unsurprisingly, lash out horribly at one another when an agreement fails to be made, with leonor at one point suggesting to brian that his late father favored her over his own son. but no matter how heated matters get, sachs and his terrific cast keep the proceedings grounded via a naturalistic approach that is endlessly absorbing and empathetic. no character’s predicament is entirely unsympathetic. the humanity sachs and his actors depict is profound and leaves a mark .
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is about something that looms large in real life, but never usually gets acknowledged in the movies in any but the vaguest way – banal, undignified embarrassment over money, and the deadly serious damage this causes .
greg kinnear plays brian, a struggling new york actor; the breadwinner is his wife kathy, played by jennifer ehle; their sensitive teenage son jake (theo taplitz) wants to be an artist. when brian’s dad dies, the family’s money worries appear to be over: he has left brian a large, handsome apartment in upwardly mobile brooklyn – at present, they have a cramped place in manhattan. the apartment comes with a sitting tenant: downstairs is a dress shop, which has been there for years, run by the harassed and hardworking leonor (paulina garcía). brian is now entitled to the rental income, though his soppy old dad charged leonor only a fraction of the market rate, and her lease is now up for renewal .
brian’s only job at the moment is a part in a profit - share production of chekhov’s the seagull, he realises that his career can only go downhill from here and he needs money. increasing leonora’s rent is a very obvious way to secure his financial future, and he is in any case under pressure to do so from his sister audrey (talia balsam), herself entitled to half this rent, and with money issues of her own. so brian – liberal, well - meaning and self - pitying – is steeling himself for this horrifically difficult conversation with his neighbour when he realises that his lonely son has become best friends with leonor’s son tony (michael barbieri), a wannabe actor, and so he actually owes leonor and her family a very important debt .
it is a kind of nightmare, and another kind of movie might want to escalate this situation generically into broad satirical comedy or psychological horror. but sachs keeps it rigorously at the level of embarrassing real life, and the characterisation and narrative developments are not forced on us; we are kept a step away, with scenes that do not appear at first to have obvious narrative relevance, like tony’s drama improv class .
sachs and his screenwriting partner mauricio zacharias show all the ways in which confrontation causes everyone to overplay their hand and put themselves in the wrong. feeling understandably cornered by brian and kathy’s casual visits – they want, after all, nothing other than to increase her rent threefold – leonor becomes coldly angry, pointing out to brian that she had a real friendship with his late father, clumsily claiming that she knew him better than brian. later, brian overreacts to what he perceives as tony’s ill manners, and this grown man makes a petulant outburst that is a wince - making misjudgment .
theo taplitz and michael barbieri co - star in this crushingly beautiful portrait of growing up in the shadow of gentrification .
it takes 12 minutes and 23 seconds to run from jake’s apartment to tony’s, but there’s an entire world in the space between their two brooklyn homes. thirteen - year - old jake (a sensitive and severely empathetic theo taplitz) is a white fourth or fifth generation american kid whose grandfather — the longtime owner of a small apartment building — has just passed away. tony (michael barbieri, a pint - sized robert de niro) is the son of a chilean immigrant, and his mother — a sharp seamstress played by “gloria” star paulina garcía — has rented the retail space on the ground floor of that same apartment building for as long as anyone can remember .
for years, the two families of these new friends have lived in harmony, but the times they are a - changin. ’ and when jake’s father (greg kinnear), a struggling actor, inherits the real estate and insists that his tenants actually begin paying their full rent, it’s the youngest generation who become the latest casualties of their city’s class warfare .
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a deceptively small movie that sneaks up and slays you with its emotional authenticity. twitter
greg kinnear and jennifer ehle play parents navigating an uneasy situation that affects their son' s one real friendship in ira sach' s intimate drama .
jake goes to a private school where he' s viewed as an awkward outsider, while gregarious tony moves with ease through the crowded ranks of his public school. they play videogames together, and tony, who wants to be an actor, serves as jake' s guide to the neighborhood. tony also takes an interest in jake' s paintings, and they make plans to apply to the same high school for the arts .
in gorgeous interludes that punctuate the movie, they zoom around brooklyn — jake on blades, tony on a scooter — accompanied by the warm, surging melodies of dickon hinchliffe' s score. with exquisite economy, sachs suggests that many of the simple pleasures of childhood and the rewards of having a supportive friend are somewhat new to jake .
his parents' awareness that tony is filling a gap in their son' s life makes them nervous when a tense situation arises with leonor. brian is an actor, in recent years working mainly in non - profit theater for lousy money. so psychotherapist kathy has been supporting the family, and they moved for economic reasons. leonor is pleasant with the new landlords, but she keeps her distance. when pushy audrey comes over for dinner and says they need to talk, leonor does everything possible to delay that conversation .
like love is strange, real estate and money play a big part here. there' s a clear picture of new york as a city in constant flux, both in the writing (the script is by sachs and mauricio zacharias, co - writer on his last three features) and in telling details picked up in the limpid gaze of oscar duran' s camera .
people displaced from one neighborhood displace people in another; long - standing local businesses are pushed out to make way for those that can pay higher rent. there can be few cities in the world where that voracious cycle happens faster than new york. arresting shots of manhattan from across the river seem to point up the chasm separating the citadel of wealth from the still - gentrifying neighborhood where jake and his family have moved.
little men is a 2016 american drama film directed by ira sachs . it had its world premiere at the 2016 sundance film festival and had its european premiere as a cross-section selection in the generations and panorama sections at the 66th berlin international film festival . 
little men is a 2016 american drama film directed by ira sachs. it had its world premiere at the 2016 sundance film festival and had its european premiere as a cross-section selection in the generations and panorama sections at the 66th berlin international film festival.
little men is a 2016 american drama film directed by ira sachs. it had its world premiere at the 2016 sundance film festival and had its european premiere as a cross-section selection in the generations and panorama sections at the 66th berlin international film festival.