When I first saw this, I couldn’t believe my luck in stumbling upon it, as a Jodie Foster fan, as a movie fan, as someone who hates being unable to see something once I hear it’s hard to find; and I suggest to anyone who ever happens to spot it in a bargain bin or second hand sale, or on the TV, don’t hesitate, it’s one of the real rare gems of cinema. Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen are as you’ve never seen them before in the two main roles, and excellent support comes from Alexis Smith and Mort Shuman.

The music, which is a crucial part of Jodie Foster’s character Rynn, ranges from her favourite classical music from Chopin, to synthy score, to strange upbeat 70s stuff. The synth score matches the lonesome shots of Rynn wandering the village perfectly, and these are my favourite parts of the movie; there’s such loneliness in Rynn, and you feel every bit of it through the performance and the music that plays over it.

The movie could be described as a horror, I guess, but it’s not gruesome, just a couple of shots of one bloody face in one scene. I like how the mystery is built up from simple parts – each character is introduced one at a time; every single thing that’s presented on screen – a birthday cake, an umbrella, a magician’s cane, an innocent cup of tea – serves some purpose later on to one character or another. It’s perfectly constructed.

The electric back-and-forth face-offs between Mrs. Hallet and Rynn are worth watching the movie for alone. It’s so great to see this thirteen year old holding her ground so effortlessly against the spindly wicked witch-type character created by Alexis Smith. And the ending might be the most acceptable, justifiable murder scene ever put on film – the fact that Hallet’s son continues to caress Rynn’s hair even as he coughs his last breath is at once jaw-dropping, sad, and beautiful. You can’t help but completely understand what Rynn is doing and why.

An older review from the depths of my hard drive, the first viewing, file is dated 28th August 2003:

I’ve been wanting to see this movie for a long time, I guess at least since 1997 when I became a full-on Jodie Foster fan. I had no idea what the movie was about, except, uh, a little girl who lives down a lane, lol, and that it sounded kinda sinister. But it turned out to be very different movie than expected, more like a “true Jodie Foster movie” to me than any of her others, even.

I’ve always found it weird to compare Jodie’s movies. She’s definitely an actresses with a whole backlog of feelings in her life, not just the feelings we all carry around with us, but movie-worthy feelings. If we’re allowed to believe the biography her brother Buddy wrote, “Foster Child”, a book she’s been known to despise (but I really don’t know why, I think it paints a great picture of her… but maybe that’s it…), then the characters she has played, at least from her first big turn in “Taxi Driver” way up to “Contact” (haven’t really had the chance to watch “Anna and the King” many times yet), are basically her. Just recently, for example, I watched “Contact” again, and I couldn’t beleive the similarity of the father-figure structure, the flashback sequences (one directly following a painful encounter where someone reminds her of her father), and particularly Ellie’s final encounter with Hadden, to scenes in “The Silence of the Lambs”. There’s similarities like this all through Jodie’s work, even the movies she directed.

The whole movie “Contact” deals with Ellie’s resistance to, and final powerless acceptance of, faith. At one point in “Little Girl…”, Jodie’s character Rynn is asked if she believes in God. “It’d be nice,” she replies. Rynn is forever deflecting. A number of IMDb reviewers have pointed out that Jodie Foster was probably the only actress who could’ve played this character at the time. It’s true. Her acting talent even then is already all there. In some scenes it literally looks like the Jodie we know today has been zapped back into her gangly teen body with bad 70s hair and is just trying to act the same: it’s freaky how grown up she was.

Even aside from the performance, which is mesmerising, the movie as a whole is sure to become one of my favourites, I cannot understand why there’s no DVD yet. All the other actors hold their own (quite amusingly at times) against the Foster Powerhouse, and the music selections (mostly Chopin: classical recordings and some synthesised parts, reminded me of “Stealing Home”, another similar Jodie character, the tragic Katie Chandler) work wonderfully in long montages of Jodie … well, being Jodie. Martin Sheen is a great villain and when he gets his come-uppance, I find it amazing that some people find this justification to call Rynn evil, they’ve got her wrong. I also love how there are loose ends and plot holes. This is another of those movies that audiences today love to pick apart, to prove their so clever. They don’t understand the beauty of cinema, that you can just stick images together and if you just sit back and let them wash over you, you will at some point form an almost supernatural connection with the director and get them entirely. It’s not about perfectly impermeable plots and neatly tied up edges – leave that to literature. I’m getting to view movies recently with this one thing in mind: cinema is motion and emotion, an attempt to reach a moment you can live in entirely; something 99% of film makers today have forgotten. This movie is brave enough to reach those moments.

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