Chichester Cinema at New Park
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The mother of a teenage boy who went on a high-school killing spree tries to deal with her grief - and feelings of responsibility for her child's actions.
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" is the story of Eva (Tilda Swinton), Franklin (John C. Reilly) and Kevin (Ezra Miller), who two days before his sixteenth birthday, goes on a horrific rampage. In the wake of his actions, his mother Eva grapples with her own feelings of grief and responsibility.
She confronts the ultimate taboo - Did she ever love her son? And how much of what Kevin did was her fault? Swinton is the gaunt and haunted middle-aged woman living through an unending hell: her teenage son Kevin is in prison for committing a Columbine-style atrocity at his high school and she is perpetually assaulted and abused by the bereaved parents.
Eva is simultaneously at the centre of this atrocity and at its margin: she must pay dearly in her wretchedness every waking moment and yet can make no restitution. All that is left to her is to replay, endlessly, the story of Kevin's life and ponder her own role. Was Kevin's a fathomless, motiveless evil? Or is it simply that Kevin is a tragic and gruesome teenager: a freak exaggeration of the banal fact that boys get angry at their parents, their schools, and at themselves? Lynne Ramsay's superb version of the Lionel Shriver novel was the finest UK premiere at Cannes this year.
· 2011 · Lyne Ramsey · 112min
