The final film of the CVAG/TIFF Spring 2012 Film Series:
We Need to Talk About Kevin is a masterful film, with fantastic performances across the board.
The threatening underside of domestic life that no one ever talks about comes to the fore in the gripping, provocative psychological suspense of We Need To Talk About Kevin, a film that tunnels beneath the skin of a mother and son on a dangerous collision course from birth.
What emerges is an original portrait of parenthood’s uncertainty, guilt and most harrowing fears, all from within the deeply subjective point of view of a mother’s most unsettling memories.
As Eva Khatchadourian tries to come to grips with her past, her malevolent offspring and what he has wrought, she falls into the thin cracks between innocence and evil, nature and nurture, love and abject horror.
Based on Lionel Shriver’s best-selling novel and directed by visionary filmmaker Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher), the story is brought to life by an ensemble cast headed by Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (I Am Love, The Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton) as Eva, in the most exposed and psychologically complex role of a career made up of bold choices.
Haunted, penitent and nearly incapacitated by guilt and grief through much of the movie, Swinton’s Eva counts as one of the most potent physical performances on-screen this season.
Joining Swinton are rising newcomer Ezra Miller (City Island) as the bone-chillingly unappeasable Kevin, who his mother knows like no one else and Academy Award nominee John C. Reilly (Carnage, Cedar Rapids, Chicago) as Franklin, the light-hearted man Eva marries impulsively, only to find their son enlarging a rift between them.
Winner of Best Film at the London Film Festival, the story is told via an intense, time-bending style, flashing forwards and backwards, from Kevin’s birth to Kevin’s snowballing misdeeds to Eva’s acceptance of her current role stoically taking her licks as the town outcast and object of fury.
Film tickets are $11 each at the CVAG Gift Shop, Videos N More and in the Rialto Theatre lobby before the film (cash only, exact change appreciated for tickets at the Rialto).
We Need To Talk About Kevin screens April 29 at 5 p.m. at the Rialto Theatre at Driftwood Mall and is a fundraisers for the Comox Valley Art Gallery.
For updates and more information visit www.comoxvalleyartgallery.com or call 250-338-6211.
— Comox Valley Art Gallery
