We Need to Talk About Kevin

Bad Mothers: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Bad Mothers Theme Week here.

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers by Deborah Pless

They’re complicated women who have both scarred each other over the years, and there’s no getting past that easily. But they both try. And in trying, we get a better picture of who they are as human beings. Like I said in the beginning, there’s something so valuable in seeing a character like Emily who is, unequivocally, a bad mother also be a good person. Because she is a good person. Sometimes. Mostly.

Grace: Single Mothers, Stillborn Births, and Scrutinizing Parenting Styles by BJ Colangelo

Eventually, Madeline is pushed to the absolute limit in protecting her child and kills those trying to take her daughter from her…and feeds them to her. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is explored to the nth degree as the blood of those trying to destroy the mother/daughter relationship are then utilized to keep baby Grace alive.

Michiko to Hatchin: Anime’s Newest Mom Has Some Issues by Robert V. Aldrich

Throughout the course of the 22-episode series, Michiko abandons Hatchin to get laid, lets Hatchin work a part-time job rather than pay for shoes she herself stole, leaves Hatchin with an abusive orphanage (more on that in a second), lets her run away half a dozen times, all while the two bicker constantly about often incredibly petty matters. All of this rolls up to establish that Michiko is, well, basically just a terrible, terrible mom.
And that’s pretty amazing.

The Accidental Motherhood of Gloria by Rhianna Shaheen

Every woman is a mother? Yeah, no thanks. If Gloria is a “mother” to Phil then she’s also a lifetime member to the Bad Moms Club. In the beginning, Jeri, Phil’s real mom, calls on Gloria to take her kids. She tells Gloria that their family is “marked” by the mob. A gangster even waits in the lobby. Jeri begs her to protect her kids to which Gloria bluntly responds: “I hate kids, especially yours.” Despite her tough-talk, this ex-gun moll, ex-showgirl reluctantly agrees.

The Killing and the Misogyny of Hating Bad Mothers by Leigh Kolb

Vilifying mothers is a national pastime. Absent mothers, celebrity mothers, helicopter mothers, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, mothers with too many children, mothers with too few children, women who don’t want to be or can’t be mothers–for women, there’s no clear way to do it right.

“The More You Deny Me, the Stronger I’ll Get”: On The Babadook, Mothers, and Mental Illness by Elizabeth King

Most people I talked to and most of the reviews that I read about The Babadook concluded that the film is about motherhood or mother-son relations. While I agree, I also really tuned in on the complicating element to this whole narrative, which is that the mother is mentally ill.

Mommy: Her Not Him by Ren Jender

I went into Mommy, the magnificent film from out, gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 26 and this feature is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character, was being touted in some awards circles as a possible nominee for “Best Actress” in 2014 (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I saw)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film (which won the Jury Prize at Cannes) kept surpassing my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son, Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).

Gambling for Love and Power by Erin Blackwell

These two characters’ inability to see each other as anything other than personal property emerges as the compelling dramatic engine of unfolding events involving far more sinister agents, who eventually exploit the fissure in the mother-daughter bond.

The Babadook and the Horrors of Motherhood by Caroline Madden

Amelia didn’t need to be possessed to have feelings of vitriol towards her son; they were already there, lurking inside her at the beginning. Rarely, if ever, is a mother depicted in film this way. Mothers are expected to be completely accepting and loving towards their child 24/7, despite any hardships or challenges their child presents to them.

Viy: Incestuous Mother as Horror Monster by Brigit McCone

For women, male anxieties over female abusers combine great risk of demonization with great opportunity to forge connection. Men, like women, understand boundaries primally through their own bodies and identification. Rejecting one’s own abuse teaches one to fight against all abuse; excusing it teaches one to abuse.

Splice: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist by Mychael Blinde

Splice explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.

Ever After: A Wicked Stepmother with Some Fairy Godmother Tendencies by Emma Kat Richardson

As an orphan of common origins, Drew Barrymore’s spunky protagonist, Danielle de Barbarac, is forced into a life of servitude to her father’s widow, the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, and the Baroness’s two natural daughters, Jacqueline and Marguerite. As Baroness Rodmilla, Anjelica Houston is equal parts breathtaking as she is fearsome, as cruel as she is oddly sympathetic.

Bad Mothers Are the Law of Shondaland by Scarlett Harris

It’s fascinating that all four of Shonda Rhimes’ protagonists have strained relationships with their mothers… Shondaland’s shows work to combat the stereotype that if you don’t have a functional family unit, replete with a doting, competent mother, you’re alone in the world.

Spy Mom: Motherhood vs. Career in the Alias Universe by Katie Bender

This conflict drives Sydney’s arc and establishes a recurring question at the heart of Alias: can you be both a mother and a spy? … Sydney’s own mother Irina figures powerfully into this conflict. … Yet Irina’s arc throughout Alias is the tension between her desire for a relationship with her daughter and her independence as a spy.

Riding in Cars with Boys and Post-Maternal Female Agency by CG

Riding in Cars with Boys showcases a humanity to women who are mothers that our media lacks. Women are constantly punished and depowered for their sexuality, and their motherhood status is often used as another way to control in media.

The Strange Love of Mildred Pierce by Stacia Kissack Jones

Elements of Mildred Pierce play on the maternal sacrifice narratives that made films like Stella Dallas (1937) and The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) so powerful, and updates them for a more cynical era, positing that her sacrifice has not saved her children but ruined them…

We Need to Talk about Kevin‘s Abject Mother by Sarah Smyth

The film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Is Kris Jenner a Bad Mother? by Scarlett Harris

When their lives are out there for all the world to see, it’s easy to judge the Kardashians.

Controlling Mothers in Carrie, Mommie Dearest and Now Voyager by Al Rosenberg

These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. …These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways.

‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’s Abject Mother

The film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Western society and culture fears mothers. Through her grotesque leaky body and the ambiguous division of the mother/child during pregnancy, patriarchy marks the mother as strange and mysterious. She is nature, opposed to the “proper” masculine position of culture. So prevalent a fear within Western society, the mother is the ultimate embodiment of abjection. In this piece, I will use the theory of abjection in order to examine Lynne Ramsay’s exquisite 2011 film, We Need to Talk about Kevin. In doing so, I hope to locate the film within a post-feminist framework, demonstrating the ways in which the representation of abjection plays into our notions of maternal and female achievement. Ultimately, I argue that the film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

The poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" — The poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin”

The theory of abjection is most powerfully put forward by Julia Kristeva in her book, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. Here, she discusses the abject as the grotesque, the repulsive, as that which we want to expel and dispose of. Particular examples of this include bodily waste such as excretions, secretions, vomit and menstruation, rotting food, and corpses. The significance of these abject moments and the reason we fear them so much is, as Kristeva says, not due to their lack of cleanliness or health “but what disturbs identity, system, order”: “What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”. It is, then, the uneasy position between boundaries that causes or repulsion and rejection of the abject: death and life, clean and unclean, healthy and diseased.

Film academic, Barbara Creed, developed Kristeva’s theory of the abject to suggest the ways in which the maternal body, as particularly represented in horror films, embodies abjection. So obviously and relentlessly fleshy and visceral, the maternal body is linked to the “natural” world of birth, decay and death. Menstruating, lactating and gestating, the maternal body embodies this very ambiguous abject space. The boundaries of her body become blurred, setting her apart from the patriarchal world which continually attempts to remain “clean and proper”. For Creed, many classic horror and science fiction films including Alien, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and Carrie play on this idea of the monstrous abject maternal function. In all of these films, the pregnant woman, or the potential pregnant woman as represented through menstruation, provides the horror of the film through the very abjection of their female body.

Website, Ain't it Cool's poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" plays on the original poster for "Rosemary's Baby" suggesting the links between the two films — Website, Ain’t it Cool’s poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin” plays on the original poster for “Rosemary’s Baby” suggesting the links between the two films

Although We Need to Talk about Kevin is not explicitly a horror film, it uses many of the tropes of the genre to create feelings of unease and fear around motherhood. Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s successful novel, the film focuses on Eva (Tilda Swinton), a travel writer, and her relationship with her (sociopathic? disturbed? evil?) son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). The film is told in a series of flashbacks as we learn that Kevin is somehow involved in a terrible criminal atrocity. As we discover what Kevin has done, the film also reveals the relationship between mother and son, posing the continually fascinating question: does familial and social upbringing wholly inform a person’s moral and ethical values or are some people just born evil?

As the film unpicks this question, it deconstructs traditional conceptualisations of the abject and identifications of the monstrous. For Eva, great pleasure is taken in the abject. During one of the first scenes in the film, Eva travels to La Tomatina festival in Spain. Through the shots of Eva wading through the semi-naked bodies and the vivid red tomatoes, the film emphasises Eva’s pleasure or even jouissance (a kind of excessive, orgasmic pleasure) in the visceral, bloodlike, grotesque experience. The film makes clear that Kevin disconnects Eva from these experiences she so craves. She’s not able to travel, and eventually winds up at a menial job in a travel agency. In one particularly painful moment, she finishes decorating her own room, her special room, with rare maps, which Kevin then destroys with paint. But not only is Eva unable to travel, write or occupy a room of her own, crucial activities for the active, challenging, and independent woman as Virginia Woolf so passionately advocated. She is also particularly separated from the physical and emotional experiences of pregnancy. The film gestures towards her pregnancy through an extreme close-up shot of cells splitting. Later, after childbirth, Eva sits quietly and almost mournfully in a cold, clinical hospital as Franklin (John C. Reilly), her husband, coos over the baby. The film presents her pregnancy through a scientific and technological lens, far removed from the abject experiences of pregnancy put forward from the previously mentioned films.

The wide angle of this shot suggests the physical and emotional distance Eva experiences towards her pregnancy and her child

Most radically, however, in a reversal of gender, Kevin primarily embodies abjection within the film. He throws, smears and expels food, leaving it to rot and become covered in ants. He refuses to become toilet trained but shows an extraordinary level of control over his bowels as he defecates just after being changed, frustrating his mother greatly. When he’s older, Eva catches him masturbating but rather than feeling embarrassed or chastised, he menacingly holds eye contact with her until she hastily shuts the door and walks away. What’s interesting about these moments is the manipulation of the traditional abject mother-child relationship. As Creed points out, the mother not only embodies the abject body. She must also police the abject body; it is the mother’s job to map and uphold the “clean and proper” body of the child before he/she enters the paternal and patriarchal world of language and culture. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva refuses or is unable to exert this maternal authority in order to keep Kevin’s body “clean”. She doesn’t clear up the food Kevin throws. She cannot potty train or exert any kind of control over Kevin’s bowel movements. She is unable to extend any influence over Kevin’s masturbatory habits. As Sue Thornham claims, “Kevin denies [Eva] control, refusing her transformation of the unknown into an exercise of mapping, of motherhood into a teaching relationship. Instead, his behaviour insists on the messiness of the body, on the fleshy, the organic, the abject – and insists that Eva recognize this, together with her own rage and fear at her entrapment”.

Kevin's not at all concerned that his mother's caught him masturbating... — Kevin’s not at all concerned that his mother’s caught him masturbating…

The film’s deconstruction and blurring of the abject roles examines and challenges the post-feminist ideas and ideals of motherhood. In Unruly Girls; Unrepentant Mothers, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn writes that post-feminism purports to celebrate intensive mothering as the liberated woman’s enlightened choice when, in fact, it both replaces subservience to a husband with subservience to the child, and naturalizes motherhood as an essential part of womanhood. By refusing to embody her traditional position as the abject mother, Eva and, indeed the film, challenge the idea that every woman must become a mother, that every woman will find fulfillment in being a mother, and that every mother must take up her position as the abject figure in this patriarchal society.

In all, We Need to Talk about Kevin is not a misogynist depiction of the feared maternal figure. Rather, it is a feminist revelation of the fears mothers have themselves; that they may not love their child, that they may not fulfill the so-called ultimate expression of womanhood and femininity, and that they may, in fact, release the monstrous potential of themselves and their child through the very abjection of their maternal function.

Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

Seed & Spark: The Bad Mamas of Contemporary Cinema

This is not an article that will chronicle empty mother characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.

Badass mom warrior Patricia Arquette in Boyhood — Badass mom warrior Patricia Arquette in *Boyhood*

This is a guest post by Mara Gasbarro Tasker.

Women have been speaking the hell up about gender in Hollywood this year and it’s been an awesome uprising to see. There has been an outpouring of voices across multiple demographics in media getting aggressive about the lack of opportunities available in all of its platforms.
What I find challenging, though, is the near constant focus on scarcity—the highlighting of women missing chances to shape film and media.

Rather than dive into the dark abyss of what feels a regression of women’s roles in the world, I decided to focus this article on what is working. On our successes. It’s much easier to model our creative designs and ourselves after things that we can see. So, if I had a beer right now, I’d pour it all out for my female homies who have trail blazed contemporary cinema. Here’s to the women who are “crushing it” in complex roles, who take every opportunity on screen to serve as their own victory of what can be done.

Last week I went to see this summer’s hot blockbuster Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Now I will fully admit that this black and white, Italian Neorealism nerd fully enjoyed the ride. Much to my surprise, the film actually had me thinking of Shakespeare and Greek tragedy because— in terms of technicalities of story and character structure— they pulled some classic tricks out of the bag and that’s always cool with me. But during the movie there was one note that kept hitting the wrong key. Can someone, anyone, please explain why Keri Russell had only a one line backstory (that she lost her child as the Simian Flu spread) but then was never touched on again in the film? She was prescribed the role of mother, lone survivor, who clings to others and is a surprisingly talented nurse on a whim. But where in the film did she represent what a woman who has lost her child in a bleak new world might actually be like? There was a human being missing in her character.

(Also brief aside, ladies we’re not really going to survive the apocalypse based on the ratio presented in the film. Because, uterus.)

Keri Russell in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes — Keri Russell in *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes* after walking into ape territory

This article is not one that will chronicle those empty characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.

Boyhood is, by logline and poster art, a film about a boy. But I was not alone in walking out of the theater thinking, “Patricia Arquette, you are a baller.” She is undoubtedly the silent hero of the film. From the start, she’s energetic, imperfect, driven, smart (but not genius) and loves her kids even though she wants nothing more from them than to go the hell to bed. She was a single mom who worked hard, got tired, got things moving in her life, and kept on. We’ve seen the foundations of her role a thousand times. (I will hold my comments about any Tyler Perry rendering of real life.) As the film evolved, she made mistakes; her body changed; at times she was involved with her kids and at times she was distant. What to me makes this a successful female role is that if you were to remove the rest of the cast from her, she still has an identity. Motherhood is a part of what she does in the same way that being married or single is a part of what she does. But stripped of supporting cast, she remains a real person with ambitions that grow internally and thoughts that are driven by her own needs and wants.

You see, there was always a storyline that belonged privately to her. She was the master of her own life and the force behind her children’s. When they grew, she grew too. She was very much a mother character AND an individual. It’s roles like these that are needed time and time again in the process of redefining the women we want to see on screen. She is multidimensional and therefore, truthful. (And, yes, I realize the film spans a very real 12 years in the world but even so. ) Kudos to Arquette for rocking the mom jeans like a warrior for 12 years.

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood — Mother and individual: Patricia Arquette in *Boyhood*

Definitely more overbearing but equally complex was Melissa Leo’s character in The Fighter. She was so nuanced. She got violent, volatile, and was packed with emotion. While she was unpleasant at many points in the story and her motivations were often outwardly selfish, she was honest. It was a straightforward portrayal of a mother not wanting to be outdone, even by her own children. She channels her own life through them and while this may not be a method condoned by any parenting books, she was very much alive and outspoken—faulted and capable of deep love. Again, if robbed of the other characters in the story, she was still a complete human being. There was nothing sexy added to her and yet her ferocious state of mind made her enigmatic and inescapable. (We need not bare tons of boob to get people to watch.) Her dynamic portrayal of a woman in a particular region and socioeconomic position, coupled with the hyper masculine surrounding pulls from her a wealth of complex emotions and decisions. And, let us not forget, unlikeable characters can still serve as outstanding representations of the depth of the female mind, soul, and existence. One of the elements ignored by women’s press this year is crowdpleasing. We want more opportunities. In every way. But I don’t care about crowd-pleasing characters. I go to the movies in search of truth. Give me that.

A complicated mother: Melissa Leo in The Fighter — The pistol Melissa Leo in *The Fighter*

Taking it even farther into the realm of complex is Julianne Moore in her disturbingly on point performance as Amber Waves in Boogie Nights. Apart from the fact that the movie itself is genius, much of its success is brought out by the powerful performances of its all-star cast. Moore’s character is particularly wild to follow. She has the softness and natural nurturing quality of a mother who has always wanted to be a mother. She is a soothing source of support but this, in the world of Boogie Nights, of course becomes complicated and perverted by the fact that she is also sexually drawn to the very young Mark Wahlberg. Her attraction to him, their on camera sexploits, and her simultaneous motherly qualities make her immediately full of wonder, questions, and provocations.

Adding to that, she’s an exciting hot mess. The woman likes her cocaine as she proves when doing hearty lines with Heather Graham in the bedroom one fateful afternoon. While in this heightened state, if you will, her inner life comes bubbling out and she emotionally confesses about how much she misses her son. She may be all over the place and her nose miiiiight be white at the end of it but she’s given fair treatment by the filmmaker and audience alike. She is trapped by her history, moves in certain ways because of it and, like any fully formed human being, when in a vulnerable position (or totally f***ed up), her inner demons come out into the world. She misses motherhood and longs for her child. It’s a part of her wiring and yet she continues to live outside of it. A hot mess with a real history—it’s a beautiful, vital performance. She embodies multiple elements of a woman in the world in this time and place and she won’t let you look away from it.

Hot mess of a mother: Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights — Julianne Moore before the infamous coke binge in *Boogie Nights*

Compared to the Hollywood backup female roles we usually passively sit through, not one of these roles and not one of these women has created as a silent, flat, disturbingly calm character. That is an untruthful portrayal in this spectator’s opinion. They came out screaming. Their exuberance breathed into these will written roles the fiery heat of a person with a true life, true purpose and fluid identity. These are the kinds of roles that make more room for women to prove that we thrive in the complex—that we are complex and that we want truth on screen.

Examples of female roles that kick ass exist. Women who will not let their roles become secondary exist. It’s been done since the beginnings of film. Alice Guy Blache’ didn’t take any shit and that was at the turn of the 20^th century. She directed, produced and wrote more than 700 films. She was doing it then, and women behind and in front of the camera have done it ever since. It’s our job now, in 2014, to recreate what we can accomplish based on our current industry model and find ways to make sure that truthful performances enter the marketplace. Hollywood films have always had plenty of fluff roles. But they’ve always had standouts. We are still in this position. We have model characters who broke ceilings once before in storytelling and will again. So…carry the torch and rock on.

In case you need further encouragement: Eva Khatchadourian in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ofelia from Pan’s Labrynth, Kym from Rachel Getting Married, Nina Sayer from Black Swan. Marnie, Briony Tallis, Thelma Dickinson, Kate “Ma” Barker, Marge Gunderson, Bonnie Parker, Shoshanna Dreyfus, Nikita. Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster, Amelie, Evelyn Mulwray, Blanche Dubois, Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Coffy, Mia Wallace, Lisbeth Salander, Jackie Brown, The Bride, Hermione Granger, Clementine Kruczynski and Annie Hall.

Like Costner said in The Untouchables, “Let’s take the fight to them, gentlemen.” (ladies)

Mara Gasbarro Tasker is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She’s currently working as an Associate Producer at Vice Media and has co-created the Chattanooga Film Festival, launching later this spring. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is directing a grindhouse short in April and is still mourning the end of Breaking Bad.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’

Official movie poster for We Need to Talk About Kevin

This is a guest post by Amanda Lyons and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Mrs Meow Says.

You know how I said in my review of Into the Wild that it was one of the most recent books I’ve read that disturbed me? We Need to Talk About Kevin is the most recent book I’ve read that disturbed me.

The reason for this (apart from the obvious fact that it’s about a child psychopath that you know is going to do something very, very bad, thus every event, every word is soaked in a weighty, dull dread) is that if you are a woman who is ambivalent about having children, Kevin represents your absolute worst nightmare, the zero sum of all your fears of what could happen once you’ve heaved a child from your bloody body.

Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly in We Need to Talk About Kevin

It’s a fascinating and minutely detailed account from Eva Katchadourian of her mothering of Kevin. It’s also an examination of her own soul and an attempt to parse what she may and may not be responsible for during the long build up to the ultimate flowering of Kevin’s violence.

Eva is a very cerebral person, and accordingly Kevin is a very cerebral book, following Eva’s long monologue (confession?) to her absent husband as she makes a hard and painful analysis of what has happened. In a wider sense, it is also an examination of the cultural notion of a mother’s guilt for the actions of her children—Eva is punished by her community for the crimes of her son and ends up living almost as a fugitive from her old life. She is wracked by guilt and horror, analysing events and their lead-up with painful clarity.

But it is soon very clear that though Eva is aware very early on that something is “wrong” with Kevin, she is isolated both by Kevin’s insidious nature and her very role as a mother—and is utterly powerless to do anything about it. Her All-American, trad values-craving husband Franklin coerces her into moving away from her beloved New York to an extravagantly ugly house in the suburbs for the sake of their “family.” Every time she tries to raise her concerns about Kevin, he is disbelieving, and disapproving—he is easily manipulated by his savvy child; because he is not Kevin’s primary caregiver, he only sees what Kevin wants him to see. On top of this, he is a devotee at the shrine of the inviolable nuclear family and refuses to acknowledge anything that could endanger this dream. Instead, he equates Eva’s misgivings with what he perceives as her untrustworthy wanderlust which he fears will take her away from him.

Tilda Swinton glaring

And this is what was so terrifying to me about Kevin—its worst-case scenario of motherhood. The woman enslaved, powerless, first by the very presence of the baby growing inside her and then trapped in the four walls of the home, slave to a psychopathic child who is the ultimate tyrant. Disbelieved by her partner, having to cope alone, cut off from the socially accepted positive experience of motherhood. Forced to nurture a child that has nothing but hate and contempt for you.

And yet, in a lot of ways Eva and Kevin are very alike. This is why Kevin knows it’s easier to get around Dad, but not around Mum—because she understands him in a way Dad never can. Kevin embodies the darker elements of Eva that she herself is unaware of until she starts her minute analysis in the aftermath of his arrest. This feeds her sense of guilt—but also her understanding of him, and her eventual coming to terms with his nature.

Shriver has obviously done her homework. Her construction of Kevin’s childhood reminded me very much of undiagnosed schizophrenic Nancy Spungen’s in her mother’s memoir And I Don’t Want to Live This Life. And when I read this NY Times article about child psychopaths, I thought right away of Kevin and how much the behaviour of the children in it echoed his. It also made me think of Lionel Dahmer’s memoir and how he searched for the answer to Jeffrey’s crimes in his parenting, the dark twists in his own personality and the ways in which he and his son were alike.

Tilda Swinton looking uneasy

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a dark and disturbing, dread-filled book. It consumed my thoughts while I was reading it and terrorised my brain. There are imperfections that mar its surface, the main one being some narrative trickery that I won’t reveal as it’s something of a spoiler. But I will say that I thought it was a bit gimmicky and a slight betrayal of the reader.

This aside, though, it’s an amazing book: painful, scary, intelligent, and unforgettable.

So when I heard there was a film coming out, I thought, “Crikey! Good luck!”

This is because, as with The Hunger Games, We Need to Talk About Kevin is narrated as an internal monologue. Recreating the same effect in a film is very difficult, if not impossible, to do. But the distinctive voice of Eva Katchadourian is essential to the story, is the story.

However, there was one very positive factor—the film was directed by Lynne Ramsay, who is absolutely fantastic. Her films are always creative, individual, and beautifully made.

Tilda Swinton and tomato soup

But hearing about the casting of Tilda Swinton gave me some pause. Don’t get me wrong—I love me some SWINTON. She is astonishingly awesome. I also really liked her interview with W Magazine about the film, in which she said:

It’s every pregnant woman’s nightmare to give birth to the devil. And every mother worries that she won’t connect to her children. When I had my children, my manager asked me what project I wanted to work on next. I said, “Something Greek, perhaps Medea.” Nobody quite understood what I meant, what I was feeling…

You have twins, who are now 13. Did you worry about becoming a mother?

When I first saw the twins, I really liked them. And, at the same time, there was a ghost over my shoulder saying, What if I hadn’t liked them? Kevin spoke to that feeling. It is that nightmare scenario: What if you don’t feel that connection to your children? There’s no preparation for having children. In Kevin, the woman I play is in mourning for her past life, and yet she looks at this dark, nihilistic kid and knows exactly where he comes from. He isn’t foreign to her; she sees herself. And that is, quite literally, revolting to her.

Predictably the gossip rags were like, “WTF! Bitch be crazy!” but I thought she nailed the hammer on the head (or whatever that saying is). She understood the book perfectly, and it was obvious that Eva Katchadourian was in safe hands.

And of course, she is fantastic in the film. She is such a great actress, so lacking in vanity and unafraid to plunge into whatever is needed for a role. It’s just, that … well, Eva is of Armenian descent. And this is quite important in the books. She’s olivey and dark, and Swinton is a long cool glass of milk.

Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly and balloons in We Need to Talk About Kevin

Obviously these things can be rectified by certain techniques, and duly Swinton’s hair was dyed, and I’m pretty sure they made her wear dark contacts, an attention to detail which I appreciate.

This might have been okay, if I didn’t feel so uneasy about the casting of the other central characters as well. John C. Reilly, I love you, so please forgive me for this, but I imagined Franklin as handsome (I think he’s actually described as such in the book)—albeit in a ruddy, slightly chunky sort of way, but handsome nonetheless. Not only did Reilly not at all correspond with how I thought Franklin should look, but I just completely could not buy he and Swinton as a couple, no matter how hard I tried. He didn’t do a bad job, but I just did not believe it. And there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between them to help the situation out, either.

And then we arrive at the titular Kevin himself. With Kevin, I had the opposite problem: he is described as being quite good-looking in the books. But movie-Kevin goes beyond this; he looks like an underwear model. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, Ezra Miller:

Ezra Miller, star of We Need to Talk About Kevin

Once again, though, I must praise their attention to detail. Kevin clearly has zits in some of the shots, and he is wearing the too-small clothes that Shriver describes in the books. But he is just so ridiculously gorgeous that I couldn’t help snorting in the theatre at the sight of him. It’s also impossible to believe that he sprung from the loins of John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton. So some suspension of disbelief issues there.

These issues aside, however, Ramsay makes a solid effort of adapting this story for film. She doesn’t try to oversimplify the story, nor does she bang you over the head with detailed explanation, which I really appreciated. The attention to detail that I’ve mentioned several times earlier shows respect for and a real dedication to the source material. Her technique is as exquisite as her previous films, and I love that the movie isn’t overly shiny looking like so many American movies—she doesn’t try to gloss over the ugly bits.

However, it’s impossible to overcome the central problem—the way the story is told in the book just can’t be replicated in a film. But I also found that having read the book, there was just no tension in the story and the characters didn’t quite gel enough for me to get pulled into their story anyway. It’s a well-made film, but I’ll have to declare the winner unequivocally: BOOK.

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Amanda Lyons is a writer from Middle Earth (AKA New Zealand). By day she writes on finance, by night whatever takes her fancy at http://mrsmeowssays.blogspot.co.nz/.