With a far too-long nine year absence, Lynne Ramsay returned with a blaze of glory at the Cannes Film Festival with “We Need To Talk About Kevin” a harrowing, gripping drama that bowled over audiences and critics and earned Tilda Swinton yet again more praise for her powerful turn in the film. And now, it’s officially headed to our shores.
In what is arguably the biggest film pick up in their history, Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced that they have acquired the film and are planning a winter release with an awards campaign in the works. An adaptation of Lionel Shriver‘s 2003 novel and co-starring John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller, the film tells the story of a mother (Swinton) of a teenage boy who went on a high-school killing spree as she tries to deal with her grief. The film hopscotches through time chronicling the relationship between mother and child both before and after the incident, and doesn’t give up any easy answers. Our man in Cannes, James Rocchi, called the film “fascinating, and chilling, and a welcome return for a director who shouldn’t have had to be away for as long as she was; Ramsay’s look at guilt, loss and shame is the kind of hard, unflinching stuff that gives off sparks of insight and truth each time it strikes hard at your brain and heart.”
The movie also boasts a minor score by Radiohead‘s Jonny Greenwood and was one of the most talked about films on the Croisette and a title many cited as one of their favorites of the festival. We can’t wait to catch up with it and we’d wager Oscilloscope will take the film through the fall festival season first before landing it in theaters. Official synopsis below:
A suspenseful and psychologically gripping exploration into a parent dealing with her child doing the unthinkable, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is told from the perspective of Eva, played by Tilda Swinton in a tour-de-force performance.
Always an ambivalent mother, Eva and Kevin have had a contentious relationship literally from Kevin¹s birth. Kevin (Ezra Miller), now 15-years-old, escalates the stakes when he commits a heinous act, leaving Eva to grapple with her feelings of grief and responsibility, as well as the ire of the community-at-large. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores nature vs. nurture on a whole new level as Eva¹s own culpability is measured against Kevin¹s innate evilness, while Ramsay¹s masterful storytelling leaves enough moral ambiguity to keep the debate going.
