Film review - We Need To Talk About Kevin

What with me not being very well read (particularly when it comes to contemporary fiction), I am rarely in the position of already knowing the source material when seeing a film. So it was a novelty for me to go into this screening with my own preconceived ideas about the story. It was also a blessing, as I don’t think I would have understood what was going on if I hadn’t already read the novel.

This adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s chilling bestseller follows Eva (Tilda Swinton) in the aftermath of a terrible event involving her teenage son Kevin (Ezra Miller). As Eva remembers her life since Kevin’s birth, it becomes clear that there was always something different about the boy which her husband (John C. Reilly) just refuses to see.

The film is dream-like to the point of meaninglessness. Whereas in the book, Eva (as narrator) explains everything in immense detail, here we are given only disjointed snapshots of events as we flit back and forth in the story. The resonance of each small moment – of all the insidious things Kevin does – is completely lost. The opening half an hour in particular is a mess, and barely held my attention. If I didn’t have previous experience of the story, I doubt it would have made any sense.

The film cuts out all of the background information about Eva and her husband, leaving them as blank characters with unclear motivations, going through a much simpler and less ambiguous story. Although Eva comes across as very cold in the book, she is extremely frosty here. Having Swinton (not the warm and fuzziest of actresses we can all agree) really adds to this.

British director Lynne Ramsey has taken an intelligent novel with mass appeal and turned it into the arty-est of art house films. While certainly a 'quality' picture with style, a creepy aesthetic and powerful performances, it is not a patch on the book.

Like Shame, I note that this is another British film set in America, again part-funded by the UK Film Council. I do find it strange that tax payers’ money is being spent on adaptations of American bestsellers, but there you go.