We Need to Talk About Kevin

February 10, 2012
Reviewed by Marc Glassman

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We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lynne Ramsay, dir & co-script w/Rory Stewart Kinnear based on the novel by Lionel Shriver
Starring: Tilda Swinton (Eva Khatchadourian), John C. Reilly (Franklin), Ezra Miller (Kevin), Ashley Gerasimovich (Celia)

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The buzz
When award-winning and very edgy director Lynne Ramsay signed on with BBC Films in 2006 to direct Lionel Shriver’s controversial novel about a mother’s troubled relationship with her son, the UK press was immediately titillated. Shriver’s novel had won the prestigious Orange Prize—previous winners included Anne Michaels and Carol Shields---and the book had been an English bestseller. But the story’s subject couldn’t have been darker: as a teenager, Kevin massacres fellow students. The press wondered how Ramsay would be able to turn such difficult material into a cinematic experience that would appeal to audiences.

Five years later, the film premiered at Cannes to critical acclaim. Tilda Swinton, in particular, received raves for her performance as Eva Khatchadourian, a writer whose life becomes derailed after the birth of her son, Kevin. She has since been nominated for Best Actress awards from France to Australia.

The genres
Dysfunctional family drama; psychological noir thriller

The premise and plot
From the time he’s born, Kevin is a demon child to Eva and a regular boy to his dad, Franklin. Whatever he does, from smearing paint over his mother’s new office to possibly being involved in his sister Celia’s “accidental” loss of an eye is condoned by Franklin. Only Eva recognizes that her son is disturbed—but then, she is prone to anger and violence as well, including “accidentally” breaking Kevin’s arm when he’s a child.

The story, told in a deliberately fractured manner, with past events merging with the present in a highly subjective style throughout the film, slowly draws the viewer into Kevin’s psychological state, making his violent actions seem inevitable.

The performances
Tilda Swinton is brilliant as Eva; she deserves every critical kudo she’s received. The film catches her effortlessly evoking Eva at every stage of her adult life, from falling in love with her husband Franklin while walking in the rain, to trying to cope to Kevin as a young mother, through to coping with the rage felt against her by the parents of her son’s victims.

Ezra Miller is properly surly and charismatic as Kevin while John C. Reilly is fine in the supporting role of clueless husband and father Franklin.

The direction
Ramsay has taken unpalatable material and turned it into an artful, quite modernist narrative; in her own way, she mirrors Swinton’s brilliance.

What Ramsay does is quite extraordinary: she tells the story of Kevin through his mother. Like such groundbreaking modernists as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, she allows Eva’s consciousness to relate her immensely difficult tale. We move back and forward in time, from one telling episode to another, grasping who Kevin is and what his fate—and his family’s—is bound to be. It’s a remarkable achievement.

The skinny
There’s no doubt about it: We Need to Talk About Kevin is an artistic success. Will it succeed commercially? I doubt it. The story is too unpleasant for mainstream audiences in Canada. Should you see it? Yes—if you can handle this dark, dark tale.