Scene City #4: We Need To Talk About Kevin (Ramsay, 2011)

There’s no guide to parenthood. Eva wasn’t certain she wanted to be a parent but still did the best she could to give her son, who was problematic almost from birth, a fulfilling childhood. Kevin is every parent’s worst nightmare, a malicious and calculating little ingrate without pity or remorse. In many ways he is the representation of pure evil; an evil oblivious to everyone except Eva, who understands his darkness (his father, played by John C. Reilly, remained painfully naïve his whole life).

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” argues that malice is inbred and that violence inevitable. Eva lives a life of guilt and a constant harassment that follows her everywhere. The film cuts back and forth in time showing us a happy marriage, a frustrated period of motherhood and at 16 the culmination of a terrible act of violence that changes both the lives of Kevin and Eva.

Tilda Swinton is a great actress and here delivers a fantastic performance that is bound to get an Oscar nomination. The movie is a hard and uncomfortable watch with an emotional climax that leaves us in shock and disbelief. Eva and Kevin have a complicated relationship that is somehow tied within a pain they’ve shared their whole life (when Eva accidentally breaks her son’s arm in a dispute, he recalls it later as the most honest thing she ever did for him).

Is “We Need to Talk About Kevin” a horror story? In many ways it could be called that, as the film pulls us into the lives of a psychopath and his victims but it’s also a fascinating portrayal of a woman and her life of misery. It is, without a doubt, one of the more interesting works of 2011.