BFI London Film Festival 2011 - WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
For her third feature after Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002), British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay has adapted Lionel Shriver's popular 2003 novel about an American woman, Eva (Tilda Swinton), suffering from the fallout of a terrible crime committed by her teenage son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). Set within commuting distance of New York City, Ramsay's bold and intensely visual adaptation is a fractured, mysterious story that swings between periods and moods and is both haunting and provocative. One minute, we witness the trappings of the suburban dream as Eva and her husband, Franklin (John C Reilly), are bringing up two children in comfort and wealth, despite the rumblings of a familial civil war. The next, we observe the situation of an outcast as Eva is attempting to rebuild her shattered life. Most impressively, Ramsay has converted the defining structure of Shriver's book - a series of letters from Eva to Franklin - into a radical, lyrical form of first-person cinema, and she and her collaborators, including cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (Atonement), show great invention in every scene. The result is partly a domestic tragedy, partly a horror story and partly a deeply claustrophobic and troubling portrait of a woman in crisis.