Reviews edited by Mark Adams
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REVIEWS
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We Need To Talk About Kevin BY MARK ADAMS
A compulsively powerful adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s much acclaimed bestseller, Lynne Ram- say’s beautifully shot film about a mother and her relationship with the most problematic of children is a strong early entry to the Cannes Competition, and a film likely to receive positive critical atten- tion. The impressive cast and controversial sto- ryline will boost distribution and further festival exposure is a given. The structure of Shriver’s original book is based
on a series of letters as mother Eva Khatchadou- rian seeks to discuss her son Kevin with her hus- band Franklin, and attempts to come to terms with his terrible involvement in a high-school massacre. Of course, the delayed drama of the source story
— and the terrible implications of Kevin’s actions — mean the film’s structure is complex as it weaves through various points of Eva and Kevin’s life. And while the terrible truth of what Kevin does is a slow reveal in the book, it has to be developed in a slightly different way in the film adaptation. The film is very much seen through the
haunted and tormented eyes of Eva (with Tilda Swinton giving a mesmerising performance) and how her life changes after giving birth to a trou- bled son, though the three young performers who play Kevin — Ezra Miller as the teen version, Jasper Newell as the boy and Rocky Duer as the toddler — are all quite astonishing, as they con-
n 20 Screen International at the Cannes Film FestivalMay 13, 2011 COMPETITION
UK. 2011. 110mins Director Lynne Ramsay Production companies BBC Films, UKFC, Footprint Investments, Piccadilly Pictures, LipSync Prodns, Independent, Artina Films, Rockinghorse Films International sales Independent, www. independentfilm
company.com Producers Jennifer Fox, Luc Roeg, Robert Salerno Screenplay Lynne Ramsay, Rory Stewart, based on the novel by Lionel Shriver Cinematography Seamus McGarvey Editor Joe Bini Production designer Judy Becker Music Jonny Greenwood Main cast Tilda Swinton, John C Reilly, Ezra Miller, Ashley Gerasimovich, Jasper Newell, Rocky Duer
sistently embody Kevin’s moody and dark socio- pathic attitude. The film is also distinctive through Seamus
McGarvey’s luminous cinematography, striking colour palette and the artfully composed wide- screen scenes. At times the song choices in the soundtrack are a little heavy-handed, and the story lags a little in the middle section, but We Need To Talk About Kevin remains an engrossingly tough film which really delivers. It opens strikingly with an overhead shot of the
packed streets when a crowd is taking part in a tomato festival — presumably La Tomatina in the Valencian town of Bunol — where participants throw tomatoes at each other. It is one of the few moments in the film where we see Eva with a smile on her face, rapt in her enjoyment of the spectacle. From then onwards, the film tracks several
timelines, cross-cutting between her sad and bleak life after the incident at the school as she struggles to get a job and visits Kevin in prison; brief moments of happiness as she and husband Frank- lin (Reilly) run drunkenly through the New York streets; the rush from work to the school where there has been an “incident”; and various points in her life as Kevin is born and grows into a teenager. It is clear from pregnancy that Eva is not at ease
with the notion of being a mother. When Kevin is first born, all he does is scream (in one perfect scene, she parks his pram next to workmen drill- ing in the road in a bid to drown out his screams for a brief time), and as he grows from belligerent toddler to manipulative and brooding youth, there are no points when mother and son really bond.
The arrival of a little sister Celia (Gerasimovich)
does little to unite the family unit, despite Frank- lin’s consistent positive attitude, and as Kevin grows from surly youth to almost sociopathic teenager, matters only become worse. Especially when his interest in Robin Hood leads to a dan- gerous enthusiasm for archery. At the heart of the story is the rarely tackled
issue of maternal ambivalence, and while that was the subject much debated in reviews of the source novel, in the film this sits alongside how Eva struggles to deal with the repercussions of Kevin’s actions and the very visual growth of Kevin from a devilish child who would put Damien into the shade through to cruelly intelligent teen. Swinton’s angular face suits perfectly the
haunted Eva, and while the film lacks scenes of her and Franklin’s happier days (in fact, it only offers vague clues to her success as a travel writer and why the couple should have enough money to move to a mansion), its main focus is on the drama of the relationships. Lynne Ramsay, whose last film in Cannes was
the much-acclaimed Ratcatcher (1999), displays a firm grip of the complex story, using cleverly com- posed scenes of empty spaces of emphasise the sadness and disconnection between the charac- ters. We Need To Talk About Kevin is a gripping film about tormented characters, with the beautifully shot final scenes never dwelling on the tragic kill- ings which haunt the story.
SCREEN SCORE ★★★
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