We Need to Talk About Kevin - it's what's on iPlayer. It crops up there two or three times a year, although I could swear I never see it on the schedules. My suspicion is that it isn't really primetime viewing, to be honest - I know I'm a cynic, but I don't honestly believe that we've quite sunk to the stage yet where films about school shootings are considered enjoyable popcorn flicks, even if the incident in question is entirely fictional.
I'm not entirely sure what it says about me that this one has somehow made it onto my comfort viewing list - it's unrelentingly bleak stuff, positively ruthless in its refusal to offer the audience or characters a glimpse of hope.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, the film is an adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel of the same name - I've never got round to reading it, so I can't comment on how faithful it might be. Our protagonist, however, is Eva Katchadourian (Tilda Swinton), a travel writer first glimpsed spattered with the fruity red faux gore of the Tomatina festival. Red is an important colour in the film, a not-so-subtle reminder of life and death, hypersaturated even within Eva's bleached-out world. Eva, you see, has never quite been able to connect with her eldest child Kevin even from when she was pregnant with him, and over the years, this has become mutual in a progressively overt fashion. Eva's husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) doesn't see the animosity between them, and while his ignorance might be due to flat-out stupidity, it seems more likely to be a way of preserving his sanity.
Kevin is a film I find hard to like, but easy to love; it wears its intelligence on its sleeve, and doesn't try to court audience affection with compromise. Instead, the viewer is treated to a wildly non-linear narrative structure that while broadly possible to follow, actually makes progressively more sense on repeat viewings - I've seen it four or five times, and it was only during yesterday's viewing that the placement of a deadlock on a cupboard door allowed me to pinpoint the chronological positioning of certain scenes relative to others. It's this sort of level of attention to detail that I really relish - an almost clinical precision in the midst of all the repressed emotional mayhem.
And it is repressed, for the most part; Kevin himself is played by various actors at various stages in his life but much of the weight of him falls upon the shoulders of one Ezra Miller. Appropriately, Miller looks every bit as androgynous as Swinton but more voluptuously so; his lips are stars in their own right, conveying at least fifty shades of plausibly deniable disdain. Memorably, we see them in close-up, wrapping around the white body of a lychee as the breakfast table conversation turns to a family member who has recently lost an eye. It's unbelievably creepy, in spite or perhaps because of the fact the audience only ever gets the most oblique of glimpses at the havoc Kevin wreaks.
If I have one criticism of the film, it would probably be of John C. Reilly playing his standard role. He's the nice but dim father figure who tries hard to see the best in people - tries hard at everything, in fact, but is destined to be perpetually outwitted. He plays the same character in Guardians of the Galaxy, more or less, and I honestly can't decide whether that's sort of impressive or just sort of depressing.
In general, though, I'd be inclined to wholeheartedly recommend We Need To Talk About Kevin. It's a compulsively watchable slice of nastiness, and Swinton and Miller's performances combine with adroitly judged cinematography and soundwork to produce a thoughtful, almost meditative piece on the nature of motherhood and self-loathing.
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