Movie Reviews: "We Need to Talk about Kevin"

[JamesG]

Movie Reviews: We Need to Talk about Kevin


Lynn Ramsay's We Need to Talk about Kevin, the first film to be screened in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, certainly got a lot of those who saw it talking.

In particular, the performance of Tilda Swinton, who plays the devastated mother of a teenager who has shot up his school like the Columbine killers, is coming in for exceptional praise.






A typical reaction is Sukhdev Sandhu’s in the London Telegraph, who writes:

“Her face is hard to take your eyes off: a picture of harrowed misery; a scene-of-the-crime landscape you study and assess like a detective carrying out a procedural; a mask constructed to face a hostile world in the aftermath of the slayings.”






Kirk Honeycutt writes in the Hollywood Reporter:

“With this film, Tilda Swinton establishes herself as the one to beat for best-actress honors at 2011 Cannes.”






The Los Angeles Times describes the film this way:

“A tragedy in multiple keys, difficult to watch but impossible to turn away from, Kevin reinforces Ramsay’s reputation as a director in complete control of all aspects of the medium.”






Peter Bradshaw of Britain’s Guardian newspaper suggests that Kevin is the kind of film that distinctly benefits from a woman’s touch.

“Ramsay’s superb film reminds us that someone does the dirty, dreary work of explaining, feeling unhappy, going on prison visits and generally carrying the can [bearing the blame]. And that may well be the mother,”

“As Swinton’s Eva wearily washes off the red paint that someone has splattered over her porch, the movie wanly restates the undramatic truth: the mess must be cleaned up somehow, and it isn’t the men who wind up doing it.”

-IMDB News