“We Need to Talk About Kevin”: A mother-son horror film

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:45:00 +0000

When two youngish guys in suits with briefcases show up at the front door of Eva, a scraggly-haired, anorexic-thin New York suburbanite played by Tilda Swinton in “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” she has plenty of reasons to be alarmed. After all, Eva is a target in her town: People smash eggs in her supermarket cart, assault her in parking lots, splatter red paint across the front of her decrepit rented bungalow. So when it turns out that these guys want to talk to her about the afterlife, Eva laughs with relief. She already knows about that, she tells them. “I’m going straight to hell. Eternal damnation, the whole thing.”

That might be the only real laugh line in Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s masterfully crafted but unrelentingly bleak film, which was adapted from the much-discussed novel by Lionel Shriver. But as Swinton often insists in talking about her role, there are scattered elements of comedy in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," and it is first and foremost a love story, albeit one any parent may find it painful and difficult to sit through. But Eva’s not cracking a joke with those missionaries. She might as well have told those guys she’s already in hell — none of the torments imagined by Dante could exceed what she’s already lived through.

Salon.com > We Need to Talk About Kevin

“We Need to Talk About Kevin”: A mother-son horror film