• The Hollywood Reporter on LinkedIn
  • Follow THR on Pinterest

Tilda Swinton's 'We Need to Talk About Kevin': Cannes Review

Lynne Ramsay's coolly cerebral drama about a mother and her murderous son is as perplexing as it is intriguing.

CANNES -- The irony in the title of Lynne Ramsay's film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, is that no one ever does. In many ways, in fact, the film is almost as nonverbal as the newly restored version of Georges Melies' 1902 A Trip to the Moon, shown earlier at the Festival de Cannes. Kevin is about one character yet takes place entirely in the mind and world of another. Seldom has a son and a mother been more unknown to each other than in this drama, which is as perplexing as it is intriguing.