Tilda Swinton gives a brilliant performance in Lynne Ramsay’s chilling tale of a woman whose son is a homicidal sociopath

You’ll never eat a chestnut or listen to the cacophony of a jackhammer the same way after watching We Need to Talk About Kevin, the intense and unnerving new film from Lynne Ramsey (Ratcatcher, Movern Callar) based on Lionel Shriver’s novel of the same name. The film chronicles events leading up to, during and after a horrific school shooting of which fifteen-year-old Kevin (Ezra Miller) is responsible. In a narrative twist, the film is not told through the point of view of Kevin, a homicidal sociopath, but is rather an exploration into the psyche of Kevin’s mother Eva, played by Academy Award Winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton, I Am Love).  The pressing question after any unspeakable act of violence is always “why?” Eva hesitates to ask her son that question, perhaps because she is afraid his answer could expose her own responsibility for his actions. Lynne Ramsey signifies Eva’s guilt by constantly staining her in some form of red matter. The film begins with a flashback of Eva bathed in tomato gore while celebrating La Tomitina in Spain, and then jumps to the present, where her face becomes misted with scarlet paint as she laboriously attempts to scrub the markings from her vandalized house. The always fearless Tilda Swinton takes us so deep inside Eva’s fraught head and heart that we don’t know whether Kevin’s sociopathic behavior, especially as a young child, is tangible or exaggerated by Eva’s point of view. We Need to Talk About Kevinis 112 minutes of unrelenting, visceral force that is bound to shock and provoke its audience. –Vanessa Graniello (USA/UK, 2011, 112 min., color, 35mm • Director/Writer: Lynne Ramsay • Co-writer: Rory Kinnear, based on the novel by Lionel Shriver • Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller • 2011 Toronto International Film Festival)