Sarah Pierce, the central figure in Little Children is a mess. It goes beyond her uncombed hair, baggy overalls and rat’s-nest purse. She’s a smart woman who has somehow ended up in a dumb life that doesn’t feel like it belongs to her. In this she seems very different from the famously grounded Kate Winslet, who plays her in the Todd Field film of Tom Perrotta’s story of suburbia and its discontents.

Ms. Winslet, whose finely wrought performance has already won her a Golden Globe nomination and could well land her on this year’s Oscar ballot, deliberately rejected a dumb life after Titanic made her a worldwide celebrity at 22. She refused to become a Hollywood cliché, embarking instead on a decade of playing chewy, interesting parts in a series of films ranging from offbeat indies like Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke to prestige projects like Iris and Quills She was the flaky, bewitching Clementine in Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and the teary, overwrought Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. She has mastered the role of glamorous yet gracious luminary, dolling up for the red carpet and dishing on the talk shows with what appears to be genuine relish.

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