Making friends and keeping them can be hard enough as it is. For Jake and Tony, two 13-year-olds living in Brooklyn, they have to contend with issues of class, of family feuds and of distance, all in one of their most volatile periods of growing up. Through understated performances by both of these boys, Ira Sachs’s “Little Men,” touchingly shows how with some love and maturity even the most strained of bonds can endure.
13-year-old Jake Jardine (Theo Taplitz) and his family have just moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn after learning about the death of his grandfather Max. Max has left the apartment and ownership of the dress shop below to Jake’s parents Brian and Kathy (Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle). The Jardines want the shop’s owner Leonora (Paulina Garcia of “Gloria”) to move out, but Jake has just become good friends with Leonora’s son Tony (Michael Barbieri).
Jake and Tony bond over their art and their video games, both of them with dreams to attend LaGuardia Performing Arts High School in a few years. The quiet and reserved Jake is a talented artist neglected at public school (“Van Gogh ended up cutting off his own ear,” his charming teacher informs him during class), while Tony, complete with a thick Brooklyn accent and down to Earth attitude, has the acting bug. During an acting workshop, Tony proves he’s a natural, sparring with his professor in an observational exercise of repeating the same comment back to the partner.
In “Keep the Lights On” and “Love is Strange,” Sachs has imbued stories of love and romance with strong LGBT themes, and while there’s a brotherly connection between Jake and Tony, they’re up against issues of class dynamics and family bonds. As the Jardines try to oust Leonora’s store from Brooklyn, there’s inevitably a sense of gentrification that arises between this white, more affluent family and the Latina single mother. But she too has a ruthless side, arguing that she knew Max better than her own children did, refusing to budge or negotiate despite a clear want to make things work on both ends.
It’s Jake and Tony who show the most stability and perceptiveness. They’re supportive of each other’s work, they stand together in protest of their parents’ feud, and Tony even picks a fight when some other kids rag on his new friend. Barbieri and Taplitz, each first time actors, feel beautifully natural, sporting a laid back posture and never raising their voice. Watch how Barbieri works his way onto a dance floor to ask a girl out, slowly inching forward with dance moves before stealthy bolting when she turns him down flat. Sachs’s visual style has an observational feel in these moments and gives these kids space to grow and act out. With modest framing and little camera movement. “Little Men” has a tender, warm tone that focuses in on the characters above all and never over states the drama.
“Little Men” has characters so well rounded and fully formed, with empathetic adults forced to make tough choices in spite of their kids, and two boys who have genuine and believable chemistry despite their differences. At just 85 minutes, Sachs’s film may be light, but like a good friendship, those good memories will stay with you.
3 ½ stars