From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell from KCRW.com.

Todd Field chose a compliment of a relatively interesting acting career with the other side of it by becoming a director.

His first film in the bedroom, Garner Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

His newest film takes an entirely different turn.

It's an adaptation of Tom Perada's novel, Little Children.

Todd, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

One of the things that I think that you do incredibly well in terms of your movies is taking

outsiders, particularly women outsiders, and the sort of prism through which they view the world.

You can talk a little bit about how that kind of reflects on little children.

One of the things that struck me about that book was this idea that he has through it,

this sort of threat of matriarchy, you know, in both traditional and non-traditional ways,

you know, not just mom at home baking apple pies, but this idea that would transcend, you know,

gender or anything else, which is the idea of encouragement and nurturing

and a gentleness that all of these characters are sort of grappling with, you know,

trying to define themselves. That was a pretty radical idea in a piece of postmodern fiction,

I thought.

It's basically sort of the story, kind of a story set in the suburban area about how people

grapple with the idea of parenthood and two different, many different sets of characters,

but principally character played by Kate Winslet. And one of the things I was struck by in the movie is how much I sort of saw a line between her character and the character, Mercer Tomey plays a bit in the bedroom,

these women who are sort of grappling with an idea of motherhood, but also sort of grappling with the idea of not feeling they belong in this really sort of tight-knit community that has almost a wall set out to kind of separate and isolate them.

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