Depending on how old you are, you may remember that John Hinckley Jr. had attempted to assassinate the late President Ronald Reagan to prove his love to actress Jodie Foster back in 1981. Well, five years before that entire ordeal, Jodie Foster played the role of 13-year-old Rynn Jacobs in a compelling drama movie titled The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. Herein I provide you with my review of this same film.
Movie critics have a myriad of different opinions about this same movie and its purpose. I wholeheartedly believe that this film was attempting to show both the good side and the dark side of adult men and older teenage boys who take a non-Platonic interest in pubescent and adolescent girls.
This movie never attempts to flirt with social taboos in the manner that both Lolita movies do. It has nothing to do with pedophilia either short of one brief mention about an adult man having sexually molested a child.
Rynn Jacobs is an orphaned girl who is living alone and fooling everyone into believing that her father is still alive so that she does not get shuffled into the foster care system. She is living in a seaside town in Maine.
A 17-year-old Italian-American boy named Mario Podesta (played by then-19-year-old actor Scott Jacoby) befriends Rynn. You may have seen Scott Jacoby in the movie titled Bad Ronald that was released three years earlier.
The filming of The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane was not the last and only time that a movie cast an actress barely in her teenage years with a significantly older teenage actor in romantic scenes. When the movie The Blue Lagoon was being filmed in 1979, Brooke Shields was 14 years old and Christopher Atkins was 18 years old; and both of them were in a number of love scenes together in that movie.
Anyhow, in the movie The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, Rynn and Mario develop a trust in each other. Mario helps Rynn dispose of evidence that could wrongfully implicate her in a crime if it were to end up in the wrong hands.
Eventually, there is a nude scene in which Rynn and Mario go to bed together and make love. Some people in American society tend to frown upon a girl in her early teenage years having an intimate relationship with a boy or man in his late teenage years. I don't see any problem with a 13-year-old girl dating a 17-year-old boy, because my cousin had a 17-year-old boyfriend back when she was 13 years old and her head didn't drop off.
Nonetheless, nowadays parents will pick up the phone and dial 911 even if they have even an inkling of a suspicion that a 17-year-old boy is having sex with their 13-year-old daughter. Back in 1976, when this film was initially released, people obviously didn't get as excited about it back then as they do now, even though society did slightly frown upon it.
In some jurisdictions of the United States, if a 17-year-old boy has sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl, Romeo-and-Juliet provisions in the statutory-rape laws will either dictate that the 17-year-old boy only gets a slap on the wrist, if convicted, or he won't be arrested at all. In any event, when you see the nude scene in this movie, it doesn't present itself as any kind of crime taking place.
You get the distinct impression that Rynn and Mario are going to marry each other someday and start a family. Their relationship with each other produces no negative or disturbing feelings on the part of the audience whatsoever.
Mario becomes Rynn's protector. He even goes as far as disguising himself as her father to fool his uncle, who happens to be a police officer, into believing that he is indeed the young girl's father.
Frank Hallet (played by Martin Sheen), on the other hand, shows the dark side of adult men and older teenage boys taking a non-Platonic interest in pubescent and adolescent girls in that he gives the audience every bit of an eerie feeling once he starts to come on to Rynn. He is supposedly in his thirties, and he has already gotten into trouble for committing a sex crime against a child.
Rynn absolutely hates Frank and doesn't want him coming near her. The main problem is that Frank's mother is Rynn's landlady, so he is impossible for her to avoid altogether.
Frank tries every trick in the book to get Rynn to have sexual intercourse with him, but she doesn't give in to him. Frank is undoubtedly a sexual deviant who preys on the vulnerable. Rynn finds him to be revolting in every way. Below are two videos with a scene from the movie in which Mario has a confrontation with Frank.
Mario Podesta Puts Frank Hallet In His Place And Shows Him That He Isn't So Tough After All
Frank goes as far as using blackmail to pressure Rynn into having sex with him. However, she is smarter than he thinks. She is even teaching herself how to speak Hebrew. She finally exacts her revenge on him and puts a stop to his shenanigans altogether toward the end of the movie.
I won't tell you how the movie ends, because I don't want to provide any spoilers. If you're curious to know, I suggest that you watch this movie from beginning to end. It is definitely a psychological thriller that you must see.
In any event, I contend that it was the intention of the person who created the idea for this movie to show both sides of the controversy over whether it is all right for a girl barely in her teenage years to get involved in an age-gap relationship with someone older.
As far as I can see, nobody who contributed to the making of The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane was looking to preach to anyone against 13-, 14-, or 15-year-old girls getting involved in age-gap relationships. Although this movie would not sit very well with Chris Hansen's so-called standards on what is age-appropriate, it goes above and beyond to get its point across to its viewers.
Then again, who cares what Chris Hansen thinks? He's nothing more than a failed journalist who has been profiting off the humiliation and detriment of others for years. The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane will go down in cinematographic history as a classic masterpiece.
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