Ira Sachs is one of my favorite directors. His 2014 film, "Love is Strange," starred John Lithgow and Alfred Molina, a gay couple, who have been together 39 years. It was human and heartfelt. The way Sachs tells it, the story was inspired by his own marriage. Sachs has four-year-old twins, a girl named Viva and a boy named Felix, that he is raising with his husband, artist Boris Torres. The family lives in Manhattan next door to the twins' birth mother, Kirsten Johnson, who is also a filmmaker.
Michael Barbieri, Theo Taplitz.
Sachs has a way of getting into the psyche, drilling down into emotions, and he does this again with "Little Men," a film about generations and obviously inspired by his becoming a parent.
"Little Men" continues Sachs's collaboration with Mauricio Zacharias, who co-wrote "Love Is Strange" and the film "Keep the Lights On."
The story is about 13-year-old Jake (Theo Taplitz) and his friendship with Tony (Michael Barbieri). Tony lives with his single mother, Leonor (Paulina Garcia), a dressmaker from Chile, runs a shop in Brooklyn.
When Jake's grandfather dies, his family moves from Manhattan back into his father's old Brooklyn home. Greg Kinnear plays Jake, a struggling actor, who asks Leonor to sign a higher lease. A feud erupts between the families, which creates strain on the boys' budding friendship.
Greg Kinnear.
The boys are both artists, which is where their bond begins – Tony (Barbieri) wants to be an actor, while Jake (Taplitz) is a budding artist.
Sachs and Zacharais's own sensibilities play into the characters and the story. In real life, Zacharias had a family situation in Brazil where his father, who owns a retail shop that he had rented out for years, had to evict the tenant.
This is the kernel that began the collaboration on "Little Men" and what makes the story so true to life. Jake and Tony also share some of the same stories as Sach's husband Torres. Like Tony, Torres was born to an immigrant mother and, like Jake, he knew from an early age that he wanted to be an artist.
Perhaps it is these close to the bone situations that make "Little Men" and its characters so engrossing.
Sachs has found some valuable talent in the young boys. Jardine plays the awkward Jake with believability and an innocence that makes you want to rescue him.
Barbieri as Tony is in the eighth grade at Our Lady of Pompeii School in Greenwich Village and "Little Men" marks his debut in a feature film.
It's no doubt Sachs' love for the story of the boys that puts them center stage, leaving the quarrelling adults to be a bit more stereotypical than how the writers have developed the children.
Kinnear plays the struggling father with too much moping for moviegoers to sympathize with his plight. Pauline Garcia as Tony's mother Leonor is a star in her native Chile. Garcia brings to Leonor a fight and a strength that rings of a woman who has been through life and the world hasn't been kind.
Theo Taplitz.
Jennifer Ehle as Kathy, Jake's mother, is a Tony Award-winner and brings the emotions of someone who's performed plenty of Tom Stoppard (she starred in "The Real Thing" and "The Coast of Utopia" on Broadway) to the film. Her pairing with Sachs makes her performance winning in that he can bring out the up-close focus that makes for an emotional character.
"Little Men" is another Sachs prize, where humans question this thing called life.
"Little Men" opens Friday at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, 280 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. Showtimes at www.gablescinema.com.
