Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin

What if you were scared of your own child? We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on Lionel Shriver's award-winning novel, is an intense glance at the relationship between Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) and her son Kevin (played in teenage form by Ezra Miller). The editing is stream-of-consciousness style, as memories of Eva's pre-motherhood life mix with Kevin's childhood mixed with her current life as a social outcast. The viewer has to piece together why she's now living alone in a town full of people who detest her so strongly.

Through glimpses/flashbacks, we see Kevin's antipathy towards others start at a young age. Try as she might, Eva cannot connect with him. She rolls a ball to her toddler son and he just blankly stares back at her. Her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) seems to have no problem getting along with their son, and is oblivious to Eva's worries. They later have a daughter Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich) who is much freer with her affections and easy to please.

As he grows older, Kevin displays more antisocial tendencies, killing his sister's pet (we assume) and orchestrating an attack at his high school. Unlike in Gus van Sant's Elephant, we don't see the violent acts being carried out against fellow students. The movie is from Eva's POV, so we see her having to deal with the fallout of Kevin's actions.

We Need to Talk About Kevin has numerous strengths, but the main one is Swinton's take on the role of Eva. She keeps a passive face in the midst of trials, and sees beyond her son's baleful glare. Despite the tricky role -- Eva seems standoffish and difficult to relate to at first -- Swinton's performance is flawless as the haunted protagonist. A constant in this movie is her determined attempt to scrub off red paint that has been splashed on her house.

In fact, the color red is pervasive throughout the movie. It's there in the blinking numbers on an alarm clock, the paint Eva keeps washing from her hands (very Lady Macbeth-ish), her memories of the tomato festival in Buñol as a young traveler, the aisle of tomato sauce in the grocery store ... the color is a continuous reference to the attack carried out by her son. Director Lynne Ramsey (also one of the screenwriters) uses some repeated imagery and sounds that have different meanings each time they show up in her film. The Indian-influenced score by Jonny Greenwood adds an almost hypnotic feel to the film, while the early R&B songs used give a deceptive sense of lightness.

We Need to Talk About Kevin carefully deals with a taboo subject; the editing and overall style of the film have me doubting that general audiences will queue up to see it. Those who do, however, will encounter a powerful and heartbreaking movie. I didn't expect it to hit me as hard as it did.