The New Waif

By Christopher Porterfield

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE

Directed by Nicolas Gessner

Screenplay by Laird Koenig

Other generations had Shirley Temple and Natalie Wood for their child stars. We have Tatum O'Neal and Jodie Foster--precocious hoydens who are made not of sugar and spice but of nicotine stains and wisecracks. The 14-year-old Foster flaunts her chipped front tooth as an emblem of contemporary authenticity, like Barbra Streisand's unreconstructed nose. The roles that have carried her into our consciousness, if not our hearts, are far from the eye-rolling Daddy's delights of yesteryear. She played the runaway child prostitute in Taxi Driver and now, in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, she appears as a possibly homicidal rebel who has her first affair at 13--both characterizations calculated to give any parent the whim-whams.

Although she plays loose--and even louche--types, Foster brings to them the likable vulnerability of a waif. She can also convey intelligence, a rare ability in an actor of any age. But these qualities are largely wasted on Little Girl. The picture looks as if it had been shot on location over a long weekend. It is the kind of quickie in which the sun can be seen shining brightly beyond the perimeter of the rain machine.

The plot is one of those strange-happenings-in-the-big-old-house-outside-of-town affairs. Foster and her poet father have leased the house, but her father has not been seen lately. Nor has her estranged mother, who came for a visit. People who inquire too closely, like a bigoted local matriarch (Alexis Smith), have a way of turning up dead. The matriarch's weird son (Martin Sheen) suspects Foster, but he seems more intent on exposing himself than on exposing her. The only person who knows whether Foster is guilty is the crippled teenager with whom she has an affair (Scott Jacoby), a fellow outcast who is on her side in the struggle against giving in to the conventions and constraints of ordinary life.

In pursuing this rigmarole, Little Girl neglects more intriguing mysteries: Exactly how does Foster put across the charade that her father is still in the house? How does she manage independently or avoid school? These, plus Foster's performance, were the makings of a character study that might have distinguished Little Girl from summer films that soon will disperse from memory like blown dandelions.

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