Little Men raises urgent questions and does so utterly organically

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An Ira Sachs film (his most recent was the excellent Love Is Strange in 2014) is all about tone and character details. He gathers twigs here, feathers there, adds some shiny detail. The result isn't a towering skyscraper – it's a bird's nest, a perfect little miracle of nature. When his father dies, struggling actor Brian (Greg Kinnear) downsizes his family from Manhattan to his father's house in a just-gentrifying neighbourhood in Brooklyn. His shy son Jake (Theo Taplitz) quickly befriends the outgoing Tony (Michael Barbieri – both kids are wonderful), whose mother Leonor (Paulina Garcia), a dressmaker who emigrated from Chile, leases the ground-floor space in the house. Unfortunately, Leonor can't afford the rent hike Brian wants to impose on her shop, and he can't afford to live without it. The resulting tension is as nail-biting (in its quiet way) as any thriller. By the end, Sachs has raised urgent questions about immigration, classism, gentrification, loyalty, family and nascent sexuality – but he's done so utterly organically, via 10 square feet of city. Lovely. (PG)