Pedro Stagnes

We Need To Talk About Kevin is an absolutely fantastic film I watched last night. The film is full of fantastic imagery that repeats itself, allowing the audience to make links between the ending they already know and the events that led to it. The scene in which Eva spits out fragments of eggshell that are within her omelette is reminiscent of the way in which Kevin bit off his fingernails earlier and placed them in a row on the table. Such links pose questions to which the director does not give answers. Do Kevin’s actions emerge from nowhere or were they prefigured? Indeed, was Kevin born evil, or was it his mother Eva who made him that way? The film centres on the question of original sin, on inexplicable malevolence that occurs in everyday circumstances.

The title of the novel is hugely ironic as Eva and her husband Franklin never to get around to earnestly discussing Kevin. The anxieties of parenthood are addressed in this film in no less a disturbing way than in Rosemary’s Baby. Kevin’s tirades against the American Dream are supported by the film’s bleak look at the world of supermarkets, mini golf courses, travel agencies, and pristine homes that do not look lived in. I wouldn’t want to leave my herrenuhren with Kevin!